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€]^e ISitierieiitje literature ^erie^. 

With Introductions, Notes, Historical Sketches, and Biographical 
Sketches, Each regular single number j 'paper, 15 cents. 

1. Longfellow's Evangeline.* It 

2. liongfellow's Courtship of Miles Standish ; Elizabeth.* 

:], Longfellow's Courtship of Miles Standish. Dramatized. 

4. Whittier's Snow-Bound, and Other Poems.* || ** 

5. Whittier's Mabel Martin, and Other Poems.** 

<i. Holmes's Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill Battle, etc.*^- 

7, 8, 9. Hawthorne's Grandfather's Chair i True Stories Irom 
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10. Hawthorne's Biographical Stories. With Questions.** 

1 1. Longfellow's Children's Hour, and Other Selections.** 

12. Studies in Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, and Lowell. 
i:^, 14. Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha. Li two parts. | 

15. Lowell's Under the Old Elm, and Other Poems.** 

16. Bayard Taylor's Lars : a Pastoral of IsTorway, etc. 

17. 18. Hawthorne's Wonder -Book. In two parts. t 

19, 20, Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. In two parts. | 

21. Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac, etc. 

22, 23. Hawthorne's Tangle wood Tales. Li two parts. | 

24. Washington's Rules of Conduct, Letters, and Addresses.* 

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27. Thoreau's Succession of Forest Trees, Wild Apples, and 

Sounds. With a Biographical Sketch by R. W. Emerson. 

28. John Burroughs's Birds and Bees.** 

29. Hawthorne's Little Daffydowndiily, and Other Stories.** 
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.'31. Holmes's My Hunt after the Captain, and Other Papers.** 

02. Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech, and Other Papers. 

03, 34, 35. Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn. In three parts.]:]: 

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42. Emerson's Fortune of the Republic, and Other Essays, in- 

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43. Ulysses among the Phaeacians. From W. C. Bkyant's Trans- 

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44. Edgeworth's Waste Not, Want "Not ; and The Barring Out. 

45. Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome.* 

46. Old Testament Stories in Scripture Language. 

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SNOW-BOUND : AMONG THE HILLS 

SONGS OF LABOR: AND 

OTHER POEMS 



BY 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



WITH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH AND 
EXP LA NA TOR V NO TES 



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n 131898 



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HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANf^^ COPY 

Boston : 4 Park Street ; New York : 11 East Seventeenth Street .| oqo ' 

Chicago : 378-388 Wabash Avenue * ^98, 

.iCEIVED. 
'^0 q L O 






Copyright, 1850, 1853, 1856, 1860, 1866, 1868, 1881, 1884, and 1888, 
By JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 



Copyright, 1883, 1894, and 1898, 
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 



All rights reserved. 

5261 



Houghton, Mifflin & Co. are the only authorized publishers 
of the ivorks of Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, Emer- 
son, Thoreau, and Hawthorne. All editions which lack the 
imprint or authorization of Houghton, Mifflin <& Co. are issued 
without the consent and contrary to the wishes of the authors or 
their heirs. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

BiOGRAPHicAii Sketch v 

I. Snow-Bound 1 

II. Among the Hills 30 

III. Songs of Labor. 

Dedication 49 

The Shoemakers 51 

The Fishermen 54 

The Lumbermen 57 

The Ship-Builders 62 

The Drovers 65 

The Huskers o . 68 

The Corn-Song: . 72 

IV. Selected Poems. 

The Barefoot Boy 74 

How the Robin came 77 

Telling- the Bees 80 

Sweet Fern 82 

The Poor Voter on Election Day 84 

The HiU-Top 85 




MAP OF THE REGION CELEBRATED IN WHITTIER'S POEMS 



A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF JOHN GREEN- 
LEAF WHITTIER. 

I. 

The house is still standing in East Haverhill, Massachu- 
setts, where Whittier was born, December 17, 1807. It 
was built near the close of the seventeenth century by an 
ancestor of the poet, it sheltered several generations of 
Whittiers, in it John Greenleaf Whittier lived till his thir- 
tieth year, and it is likely to enjoy a long lease of life in as- 
sociation with his name, for after his death it was purchased 
to be held in trust as a shrine, and its chief room has been 
restored to the condition in which it was when the boy was 
living in it, the recollection of whose experience inspired 
that idyl of New England life, " Snow-Bound." 

It is to " Snow-Bound " that one resorts for the most 
natural and delightful narrative of the associations amongst 
which Whittier passed his boyhood. His family held to the 
tenets of the Friends, and the discipline of that society, in 
connection with the somewhat rigorous exactions of country 
life in New England in the early part of the century, deter- 
mined the character of the formal education which he re- 
ceived. In later life he was wont to refer to the journals of 
Friends which he found in the scanty library in his father's 
house as forming a large part of his reading in boyhood. 
He steeped his mind with their thoughts and learned to 
love their authors for their unconscious saintliness. There 
were not more than thirty volumes on the shelves, and, with 
a passion for reading, he read them over and over. One 
of these books, however, was the Bible, and he possessed 
himself of its contents, becoming not only familiar with the 
text, but penetrated by the spirit. 



vi A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 

Of regular schooling he had what the neighborhood could 
give, a few weeks each winter in the district school, and, 
when he was nineteen, a little more than a year in an acad- 
emy just started in Haverhill. In " Snow-Bound " he has 
drawn the portrait of one of his teachers at the district 
school, and his poem " To My Old Schoolmaster " commem- 
orates another, Joshua Coffin, with whom he preserved a 
strong friendship in his manhood, when they were engaged 
in the same great cause of the abolition of human slavery. 
These teachers, who, according to the old New England 
custom, lived in turn with the families of their pupils, 
brought into the Whittier household other reading than 
strictly religious books, and Coffin especially rendered the 
boy a great service in introducing him to a knowledge of 
Burns, whose poems he read aloud once as the family sat 
by the fireside in the evening. The boy of fourteen was 
entranced ; it was the voice of poetry speaking directly to 
the ear of poetry, and the newcomer recognized in an in- 
stant the prophet whose mantle he was to wear. Coffin 
was struck with the effect on his listener, and left the book 
with him. In one of his best known poems, written a gen- 
eration later, on receiving a sprig of heather in bloom, 
Whittier records his indebtedness to Burns. To use his 
own expression, " the older poet woke the younger." 

The home life which the boy led, aside from the conscious 
or unconscious schooling which he found in books, was one 
of many hardships, but within the sanctuary of a gracious 
and dignified home. The secluded valley in which he lived 
was three miles from the nearest village ; from the date of 
the erection of the homestead till now no neighbor's roof 
has been in sight. The outdoor life was that of a farmer 
with cattle, tempered, indeed, in the short summer by the 
kindly gifts of nature, so happily shown in the poem " The 
Barefoot Boy," but for the most part a life of toil and en- 
durance which left its marks indelibly in the shattered con- 
stitution of the poet. Twice a week the family drove to a 
Friends' meeting at Amesbury, eight miles distant, and in 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHIT TIER, vii 

winter without warm wraps or protecting robes. The old 
barn, built before that celebrated in " Snow-Bound," had no 
doors, and tjie winter snows drifted upon its floor, for neither 
beasts nor men, in the custom of the time, were expected to 
resist cold except by their native vigor. Whittier's com- 
panions of his own age were a brother and two sisters, one 
of whom, Elizabeth Whittier, was his nearest associate for 
the better part of his life, and the household held also that 
figure so beautiful and helpful in many families, an Aunt 
Mercy, as also a lively, adventurous bachelor, Uncle Moses. 
The father of the house, as we are told, was a man of few 
words ; the mother, whose life was spared till that happy 
time when mother and son changed places in care-taking, 
had a rarely refined nature, in which the Quaker graces of 
calmness and order were developed into a noble beauty of 
living. 

n. 

The poems written by him when he was a schoolboy dis- 
play, as indeed did most of his writing for a few years 
afterward, little more than a versifying facility and a certain 
sense of correct form. His mother and his sister Mary en- 
couraged him, but his father, a hard-headed, hard-working 
farmer, of sound judgment and independent habits of think- 
ing, was too severely aware of the straitened condition of 
the family to think of anything else for his son than a life 
of toil like his own. Mary Whittier, with a sister's pride, 
sent one of her brother's poems, unknown to the author, to 
the " Free Press " of New bury port, a new paper lately 
started which commended itself by its tone to the Quaker 
Whittier, so that he had subscribed to it. The poem was 
printed, and the first that the poet knew of it was when he 
caught the paper from the postman riding by the field 
where he and his father were working. It was such a 
moment as comes to a young poet, believing in himself 
and having that aspiration for recognition which is ona 
of the holiest as it is one of the subtlest elements iu tbo 



viii A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 

poetic constitution. The poem was followed by another, 
which the author himself sent ; and when it was printed, it 
was introduced by an editorial note, in which .the fame of 
the poet was foretold, and a hint given as to his youth and 
condition. For with the publication of the first poem, 
" The Exile's Departure," the editor had become so inter- 
ested that he had sought the acquaintance of the writer. 

Whittier was at work in the fields when the editor, him- 
self a young man, called. He held back, but was induced 
by his sister to make himself presentable and come in to see 
the visitor. It was one of those first encounters which in 
the history of notable men are charged with most interesting 
potentialities. Garrison, for he was the editor, had not yet 
done more than take the first step on his thorny path to 
greatness, and Whittier was still working in the fields, 
though harboring poetic visitants. Garrison was only a 
few years older, and in later life those few years counted 
nothing, but now they were enough to lead him to take the 
tone of an adviser, and both to Greenleaf and to his father, 
who entered the room, he spoke of the promise of the youth 
and the importance of his acquiring an academic education. 

It was against the more rigorous interpretation of the 
Friends' doctrine that literary culture should be made an 
end, and the notion that the boy should be sent to an 
academy was not encouraged ; but a few months later, 
Garrison having left Newburyport for Boston, and Whit- 
tier making a new connection with the Haverhill " Ga- 
zette," the editor of that paper, Mr. A. W. Thayer, gave 
the same advice and pressed the consideration that a new 
academy was shortly to be opened in Haverhill. He offered 
the boy a home in his own family, and the father now 
consented, moved also by the doubt if his son could stand 
the physical strain of farm work. He had no money, how- 
ever, to spare, and the student must earn his own living. 
This he did by making a cheap kind of slipper, and devoted 
Mmself so faithfully to the industry in the few months inter- 
vening between the decision and the opening of the academy. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. ix 

in May, 1827, that he earned enough to pay his expenses 
there for a term of six months. " He calculated so closely 
every item of expense," says his biographer, '-' that he knew 
before the beginning of the term that he would have twenty- 
five cents to spare at its close, and lie actually had this sum 
of money in his pocket when his half year of study was 
over. It was the rule of his whole life never to buy any- 
thing until he had the money in hand to pay for it ; and 
although his income was small and uncertain until past mid- 
dle life, he was never in debt." 

By teaching a district school a few weeks and aiding a 
merchant with bookkeeping, he was enabled to make out a 
full year of study, and meantime continued to write both 
verse and prose for the newspapers. By this means he 
pa,ved the way for an invitation, when he was twenty-one 
years of age, to enter the printing-office in Boston of the 
Colliers, father and son, who published two weekly papers 
and a magazine. One of the weeklies was a political jour- 
nal, " The Manufacturer," the other a paper of reform and 
humanitarianism called " The Philanthropist." Whittier 
had editorial charge of the former, and occupied himself 
with writing papers on temperance and the tariff, of which 
he was an ardent advocate, and with verses and tales. It 
was not altogether a congenial relation in which he found 
himself, though the occupation was one to which he was to 
turn naturally for some time to come for self-support ; he 
remained with the Colliers for a year and a half, and then 
returned to his father's farm, with between four and five 
hundred dollars, the savings of half his salary. This he 
devoted to freeing the farm from the incumbrance of a 
mortgage, and himself took charge of the farm, for his 
father was rapidly failing in health. 

III. 

The death of his father, in June, 1830, while it set him 
free from his father's occupation, made it still more impera- 
tive for him to earn his living, since the care of the family 



X A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 

fell upon him. He had been using his pen and studying, 
meanwhile, and his verses were bringing him acquaintances 
and friends. Through one of these, the brilliant George D. 
Prentice, he was induced to take up editorial work again 
in Hartford ; but after a determined effort it became clear 
that his health was too fragile to permit him to devote him- 
self to the exacting work of editing a journal, and in Janu- 
ary, 1832, he returned to his home. Just at this time he 
published his first book, a mere pamphlet of twenty-eight 
octavo pages containing a poem of New England legendary 
life, entitled '^ Moll Pitcher." He had contributed besides 
more than a hundred poems in the three years since leaving 
the academy, and had written many more. But though 
thus active with his pen, his strongest ambition, it may be 
said, was at this time in the direction of politics. For the 
next four years he remained on the farm at Haverhill, and 
when in April, 1836, the farm was sold, he removed, with 
his mother and sister, to the village of Amesbury, chiefly 
that they might be nearer the Friends' meeting, but also 
that Whittier might be more in the centre of things. In 
his seclusion at East Haverhill he had eagerly watched the 
course of public events. He was a great admirer of Henry 
Clay, and a determined opponent of Jackson. With his en- 
gaging character, his intellectual readiness, and that political 
instinct which never deserted him, he was rapidly coming 
into public notice in his district, and his own desire for serv- 
ing in office drew him on. To be a member of Congress he 
must be twenty-five years old, and at the election which was 
to occur just before his birthday there were many indica- 
tions that he would be the nominee of his party. This was 
at the end of 1832, but before the next election occurred 
there was a great obstacle created by Whittier himself, and 
thenceforward through the years when he would naturally 
engage in public life he was practically debarred. 

It was not the precariousness of his health which kept 
Whittier out of active politics, though this was a strong rea- 
son for avoiding the stress and strain of a public life, but 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. xi 

the decision which led him to enlist in an unpopular cause. 
In November, 1831, he had published his poem ^'To Wil- 
liam Lloyd Garrison." It intimates a personal influence 
under which, with a moral nature fortified by great political 
insight, he began to consider seriously the movement for the 
abolition of slavery which was making itself evident here 
and there. As a specific result of this study he wrote in 
the spring of 1833 the pamphlet " Justice and Expediency," 
and published it at his own expense. It was a piece of 
writing compact with carefully gathered facts and logical 
deduction, and earnest with the rhetoric of personal convic- 
tion. Every sentence was an arraignment of slavery and 
a blow at his own chances of political office. The per- 
formance was an answer to the appeal of his own truthful 
nature, and it was a deliberate act of renunciation. 

Now also began, at first with remote suggestions as in 
" Toussaint L'Ouverture," then nearer and nearer as he 
sings his tribute to the men of his day, known or unknown, 
who had been champions of freedom, — Storrs, Shipley, 
Torrey, — those bursts of passionate verse which were the 
vent of his soul overburdened with a sense of the deep 
wrong committed against God and man by the persistency 
of African slavery in the United States. In the years im- 
mediately following his decision to cast in his lot with the 
small band of despised anti-slavery agitators almost all of 
the poems which he wrote were of two sorts, — either breath- 
ings of a spirit craving close communion with God, or fiery, 
scarce-controlled outbursts of feeling upon the evils of sla- 
very, and vials of wrath poured out on those who aided 
and abetted the monstrous wrong. If, in the years before, 
Whittier's verses, with their conventional smoothness, had 
drawn notice by the gentle spirit which suffused them, now 
his loud cry, violent and tempestuous, broke upon the ear 
with a harshness and yet an insistent fervor which com- 
pelled men to listen. It is indeed a striking phenomenon 
in poetic growth which one perceives who is familiar with 
Whittier's compositions and casts his eye down a chronolo- 



XU A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 

gical list of his poems. Up to the date of his enlistment 
in the ranks of the anti-slavery army his ambition had been 
divided between literature and politics, with a taste in verse 
which was harmonious and an execution which was not 
wanting in melody, yet had no remarkable note. After he 
stepped into the ranks a great change came over his spirit. 
He rushed into verse in a tumultuous fashion, careless of the 
form, eager only to utter the message which half choked him 
with its violence. There was a fierce note to his poetry, 
rough, but tremendously earnest. This was the first effect, 
such a troubling of the waters as gave a somewhat turbid 
aspect to the stream, and for a while his verse was very 
largely declamatory, rhymed polemics. 

But such poems as " Expostulation," beginning 

" Our fellow-countrymen in chains ! " 

were to people then living scarcely so much poems as they 
were sounds of a great trumpet which were heard, not for 
their musical sonance, but for their power to stir the blood ; 
and Whittier, though living almost in seclusion, became a 
name of note to many who would scarcely have known of 
him had he been a mere legislator or smooth-singing verse- 
maker. He was recognized by the anti-slavery leaders as 
one of themselves, and this not only because of his powerful 
speech in song, but because on closer acquaintance he proved 
to be a most sagacious and wise reader of men and affairs. 
His own neighbors quickly learned this quality in him. He 
was sent to the legislature in 1835 and reelected in 1836, 
but his frail health made it impossible for him to continue 
in this service. Nevertheless, he wielded political power 
with great skill aside from political office. He was indefati- 
gable in accomplishing political ends through political men. 
No important nominations were made in his district without 
a preliminary conference with him, and more than once he 
compelled unwilling representatives to work for the great 
ends he had in view. It may be said here that though a 
steadfast leader in the anti-slavery cause he differed from 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHIT TIER. xiii 

some of his associates, both now and throughout his life, in 
setting a high value upon existing political organizations. 
" From first to last," says his biographer, " he refused to 
come out from his party until he had done all that could be 
done to induce it to assist in the work of reform." Whit- 
tier himself, in an article written about this time, exclaims, 
'^ What an absurdity is moral action apart from political ! " 
meaning of course when dealing with those subjects which 
demand political action. Once more, in a letter written to 
the anti-Texas convention of 1845, he said that though as 
an abolitionist he was no blind worshiper of the Union, he 
saw nothing to be gained by an effort, necessarily limited 
and futile, to dissolve it. The moral and political power 
requisite for dissolving the Union could far more easily 
abolish every vestige of slavery. 

IV. 

We have anticipated a little in these comments the strict 
order of Whittier's life. In 1836 was published the first 
bound volume of his verse. It was confined to his poem 
'^ Mogg Megone," which he had before printed in the " New 
England Magazine." It may be taken as the last expres- 
sion of Whittier's poetic mind before the great change came 
over it of which we have spoken, and he was himself later 
aware of its lack of genuiiie life ; but at the end of 1837, 
Isaac Knapp, publisher of the '' Liberator," Garrison's 
paper, to which Whittier had been contributing his stirring 
verses, without consulting the poet, issued a volume of over 
a hundred pages, entitled " Poems written during the Pro- 
gress of the Abolition Question in the United States, be- 
tween the Years 1830 and 1838. By John G. Whittier." 
This was the first collection of his miscellaneous poems, and 
a year later another volume was issued by Joseph Healy, 
the financial agent of the Anti-Slavery Society of Pennsyl- 
vania. Meanwhile Whittier had been staying awhile in 
Philadelphia, engaged in editing the " Pennsylvania Free- 



xiv A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 

man." It was during this time that Pennsylvania Hall 
was burnt by a mob enraged at the gathering there of an 
anti-slavery convention. Besides his work on the paper, 
which was frequently interrupted by ill health, he devoted 
himself in other ways to the promotion of the cause in which 
he was so ardently involved, but early in 1840 he found it 
imperative to give up all this work and retire to his home 
in Amesbury. 

From this time forward he made no attempt to engage in 
any occupation which did not comport with a quiet life in 
his own home, except that for a few months in 1844 he 
resided in Lowell, editing the " Middlesex Standard." He 
wrote much for the papers, and the poetic stream also 
flowed with greater freedom and it may be said clearness. 
He contributed a number of poems to the " Democratic 
Keview " and other periodicals, and in 1843 the firm of 
W. D. Ticknor published " Lays of my Home, and Other 
Poems," the first book from which Whittier received any 
remuneration. The struggle for maintenance through these 
years was somewhat severe, but in January, 1847, he formed 
a connection which was not only to afford him a more 
liberal support, but also to give him a most favorable outlet 
for his writings, both prose and verse. 

It had been decided by the American and Foreign Anti- 
Slavery Society to establish a weekly paper in Washington, 
and the editorial charge was committed to Dr. Gamaliel 
Bailey, an intrepid and able man of experience. The paper 
was named the " National Era," and Whittier was invited 
to become a regular contributor, editorial and otherwise, 
but not required to do his work away from home. The 
paper, as is well known, was the medium for the publication 
of " Uncle Tom's Cabin," and its circulation was so consid- 
erable as to make it a source of profit to its conductors as 
early as by the end of the first year. From 1847 till 1860 
Whittier made this paper the chief vehicle of his writings, 
contributing not only poems, but reviews of contemporary 
literature, editorial articles, letters, sketches, and the serial 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. xv 

which was published afterward in a book, "Leaves from 
Margaret Smith's Journal." 

In 1849 B. B, Mussey & Co., of Boston, brought out a 
comprehensive collection of Whittier's Poems in a dignified 
octavo volume illustrated with designs by Hammatt Billings. 
It was a venture made quite as much on friendly as on 
commercial grounds. Mr. Mussey was a cordial supporter 
of the anti-slavery cause, and had a great admiration for 
Whittier's genius. He was determined to publish the 
poems in a worthy form, and his generous act met with an 
agreeable reward. Its success was a testimony to the repute 
in which Whittier was now held. At the same time his 
publishers, Messrs. Ticknor & Fields, were in negotiation 
with him for a new volume, and in 1850 appeared " Songs 
of Labor, and Other Poems." 

The establishment of " The Atlantic Monthly " in 1857 
gave another impetus to Whittier's poetic productiveness. 
Here was a singular illustration of the growth in the com- 
munity about him of a spirit quite in agreement with his 
own personality. Opposition to slavery lay at the base of 
the origin of the magazine, and yet in the minds of its pro- 
jectors this political bond was to unite men of letters and 
not simply antagonists of slavery. The " Atlantic " was to 
be the organ of the literary class, but it was to be by no 
means exclusively devoted to an anti-slavery crusade. In- 
deed, it would almost seem as if the specific purpose of the 
magazine was almost lost sight of at first in the richness and 
abundance of general literature which it immediately stim- 
ulated. It is easy now to see how natural and congenial a 
medium this was for Whittier's verse. In subjecting his 
political and literary ambition to a great moral purpose, so 
that he could no longer hope for political official power, he 
had fulfilled the true saying that to save one's life one must 
lose it. He had given up the name and place of a political 
magnate, but he had secured the more impregnable position 
of the power behind the throne in politics, and in place of a 
smooth versifier, holding the attention of those with whom 



XVI A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 

poetry was a plaything, he had become one of the few im- 
perative voices of song, and had taken his place as one of 
the necessary men in the group of men of letters who now 
came together to represent the highest force in American 
literature. 

V. 

The war for the Union naturally found Whittier strongly 
stirred, and more than ever watchful of the great issue 
which throughout his manhood had been constantly before 
his eyes ; and his triumphant " Laus Deo " is as it were the 
Nunc Dimittis of this modern prophet and servant of the 
Lord. But Whittier was a Quaker, not in any conventional 
sense, but by birthright, conviction, and growing conscious- 
ness of communion with God. Though he wrote such a 
stirring ballad, therefore, as " Barbara Frietchie," he wrote 
also the lines addressed to his fellow believers : — 

** The leveled gun, the battle brand 
We may not take : 
But, calmly loyal, we can stand 
And suffer with our suffering land 
For conscience' sake." 

It is interesting also to observe how in this time of stress 
and pain he escaped to the calm solace of nature. His 
poem " The Battle Autumn of 1862 " records this emotion 
specifically, but more than one poem in the group '' In War 
Time " bears testimony to this sentiment. Other poems 
written during the years 1861-1865 illustrate the longing 
of Whittier's nature for relief from the terrible knowledge 
of human strife, a longing definitely expressed by him in the 
prelusive address to William Bradfprd, the Quaker painter, 
prefacing " Amy Went worth," in which he says : — 

" We, doomed to watch a strife we may not share 
With other weapons than the patriot's prayer, 
Yet owning with full hearts and moistened eyes 
The awful beauty of self-sacrifice, 
And wrung by keenest sympathy for all 
Who gave their loved ones for the living wall 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, xvii 

'Twixt law and treason, — in this evil day 

May haply find, through automatic play 

Of pen and pencil, solace to our pain, 

And hearten others with the strength we gain," 

Something of the same note is struck in the introduction to 
" The Countess." But before the war closed, Whittier met 
with a personal loss which meant much to him every way. 
His sister Elizabeth, as we have seen, had been his closest 
companion, his most intimate acquaintance. He had shared 
his life with her in no light sense, and now he was to see 
the flame of that life flicker and at last expire in the early 
fall of 1864. The first poem after her death, " The Van- 
ishers," in its theme, its faint note as of a bird calling from 
the wood, is singularly sweet, both as a sign of the return of 
the poet to the world after his flight from it in sympathy 
and imagination with the retreating spirit of his sister, and 
as a prophecy of the character of so large a part of Whit- 
tier's poetry from this time forward. " The Eternal Good- 
ness," written a twelvemonth later, may be said more pos- 
itively than any other poem to contain Whittier's creed, 
and the fullness of faith which characterizes it found free 
and cheerful expression again and again. 

Yet another poem which immediately followed it is sig- 
nificant, not only by its repetition of his note of spiritual 
trust, but by its strong witness to the sane, human quality 
of Whittier's genius. '' Snow-Bound,'' simple and radiant 
as it is with human life, is also the reflection of a mind 
equally at home in spiritual realities. It may fairly be said 
to sum up Whittier's personal experience and faith ; and yet 
so absolutely free is it from egotism that it has taken its 
place as the representative poem of New England country 
life, quite as surely as Burns's '' The Cotter's Saturday 
Night " expresses one large phase of Scottish life. 

The success which attended " Snow-Bound " was imme- 
diate, and the result was such as to put Whittier at once 
beyond the caprices of fortune, and to give him so firm a 
place in the affections of his countrymen as to complete, as ifc 



xviii A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 

were, the years of his struggle and his patient endurance. 
There is something almost dramatic in the appearance of 
this poem. The war was over : the end of that long con- 
test in which Whittier, physically weak, hut spiritually strong, 
had been a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by 
night. What was the force which had been too mighty for 
a great entrenched wrong ? "With no conscious purpose, 
but in the simple delight of poetry, Whittier sang this win- 
ter idyl of the North, and one now sees how it imprisons 
the light which shatters the evil, for it is an epitome of 
homely work and a family life lived in the eye of God, 
^' duty keeping pace with all." 

VI. 

The history of Whittier's life after this date was written 
in his poems. The outward adventure was slight enough. 
He divided his year between the Amesbury home and that 
which he established with other kinsfolk at Oak Knoll in 
Danvers. In the summer time he was wont to seek the 
mountains of New Hampshire or the nearer beaches that 
stretch from Newburyport to Portsmouth. The scenes thus 
familiar to him were translated by him into song. Human 
life blended with the forms of nature, and he made this 
whole region as distinctively his poetic field as Wordsworth 
made the Lake district of Cumberland, or as Irving made 
the banks of the Hudson. In such a group as " The Tent 
on the Beach," in " Among the Hills," " The Witch of 
Wenham," " Sunset on the Bearcamp," " The Seeking of 
the Waterfall," " How the Women went from Dover," 
" The Homestead," and many others he records the delight 
which he took in nature and especially in the human asso- 
ciations with nature. 

" The Tent on the Beach " again illustrates the personal 
attachments which he formed and which constituted so large 
an element in the last thirty years of his life. In actual 
contact and in the friendships formed through books, one 
may read the largeness of Whittier's sympathy with his fel- 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHIT TIER, xix 

lows, and the warmth of his generous nature. Such poems as 
the frequent ones commemorating Garrison, Sumner, Long- 
fellow, Lowell, Holmes, the Fieldses, Mrs. Child, the Spof- 
fords, Stedman, Barnard, Bayard Taylor, Weld, and others 
illustrate the range of his friendship ; but the poems also 
which bear the names of Tilden, Mulford, Thiers, Halleck, 
Agassiz, Garibaldi, illustrate likewise a strong sense of the 
lives of men who perhaps never came within the scope of 
personal acquaintance. 

Nor was it only through human lives that he touched the 
world about him. His biographer bears witness to the as- 
siduity with which he compensated in later years for the 
restrictions imposed by necessity on his education in earlier 
years. He became a great and discursive reader, and his 
poems, especially after " Snow-Bound," contain many proofs 
of this, both in the suggestions which gave rise to them and 
in the allusions which they contain. Northern literature 
is reflected in " The Dole of Jarl Thorkell," '' King Volmer 
and Elsie," " The Brown Dwarf of Rtigen," and others ; 
Eastern life and religion reappear in " Oriental Maxims," 
" Hymns of the Brahmo Somaj," " The Brewing of Soma," 
" Giving and Taking," and many more ; and history, espe- 
cially that involved with his own religious faith, gave oppor- 
tunity for " The King's Missive," " St. Gregory's Guest," 
" Banished from Massachusetts," " The Two Elizabeths," 
" The Pennsylvania Pilgrim." 

Yet, as we suggested above, the most constant strain, 
after all, was that which found so full expression in " The 
Eternal Goodness." So pervasive in Whittier's mind was 
this thought of God that it did not so much seek occasion 
for formal utterance, as use with the naturalness of breath- 
ing such opportunities as arose, touching with light one 
theme after another, and forming, indeed, the last whis- 
pered voice heard from his lips, " Love to all the world." 

It was a serene life of the spirit which Whittier led in 
the closing years of his life, and he was secure in friendship 
and the shelter of home. He read, he saw his neighbors 



XX JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 

and friends, he wrote letters, he took the liveliest interest in 
current affairs, especially in politics. He had heen a presi- 
dential elector in both the Lincoln campaigns ; so that he 
used humorously to say that he was the only person who 
had had the opportunity to vote for Lincoln four times. 
He was much sought after for occasional poems, and he 
complied with these requests from time to time, as in his 
" Centennial Hymn," " In the Old South," " The Bartholdi 
Statue," " One of the Signers," and " Haverhill ; " but he 
was quite as likely to take hint from an occasion without 
the asking. Yet all this time he was assailed by infirmi- 
ties which would have shaken the serenity of most. He 
suffered intensely from neuralgic disorders, and was sadly 
broken in the last years of his life. 

He sang up to the end, one may say. His last poem, 
written only a few weeks before his death, commemorated 
the eighty-third birthday of Oliver Wendell Holmes. True 
to the controlling spirit of his life, he sings, — 

" The hour draws near, howe'er delayed and late, 
When at the Eternal Gate 
We leave the words and works we call our own, 
And lift void hands alone 

" For love to fill. Our nakedness of soul 
Brings to that Gate no toll ; 
Giftless we come to Him, who all things gives, 
And live because He lives." 

He died at Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, September 7, 
1892, in the eighty-fifth year of his age. 



SNOW-BOUND: A WINTER IDYL. 



TO THE MEMORY OF THE HOUSEHOLD IT DESCRIBES 
THIS POEM IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. 

The inmates of the family at the Whittier homestead 
who are referred to in the poem were my father, mother, 
my brother and two sisters, and my uncle and aunt, both 
unmarried. In addition, there was the district school mas- 
ter, who boarded with us. The " not unf eared, half -welcome 
guest " was Harriet Livermore, daughter of Judge Liver- 
more, of New Hampshire, a young woman of fine natural 
ability, enthusiastic, eccentric, with slight control over her 
violent temper, which sometimes made her religious profes- 
sion doubtful. She was equally ready to exhort in school- 
house prayer-meetings and dance in a Washington ball- 
room, while her father was a member of Congress. She 
early embraced the doctrine of the Second Advent, and felt 
it her duty to proclaim the Lord*s speedy coming. With 
this message she crossed the Atlantic and spent the greater 
part of a long life in travelling over Europe and Asia. She 
lived some time with Lady Hester Stanhope, a woman as 
fantastic and mentally strained as herself, on the slope of 
Mt. Lebanon, but finally quarrelled with her in regard to 
two white horses with red marks on their backs which sug- 
gested the idea of saddles, on which her titled hostess ex- 
pected to ride into Jerusalem with the Lord. A friend of 
mine found her, when quite an old woman, wandering in 
Syria with a tribe of Arabs, who, with the Oriental notion 
that madness is inspiration, accepted her as their prophetess 



2 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 

and leader. At the time referred to in Snow-Bound she 
was boarding at the Rocks Village, about two miles from 
us. 

In my boyhood, in our lonely farm-house, we had scanty 
sources of information ; few books and only a small weekly 
newspaper. Our only annual was the almanac. Under 
such circumstances story-telling was a necessary resource in 
the long winter evenings. My father when a young man 
had traversed the wilderness to Canada, and could tell us 
of his adventures with Indians and wild beasts, and of his 
sojourn in the French villages. My uncle was ready with 
his record of hunting and fishing, and, it must be confessed, 
with stories which he at least half believed, of witchcraft 
and apparitions. My mother, who was born in the Indian- 
haunted region of Somersworth, New Hampshire, between 
Dover and Portsmouth, told us of the inroads of the sav- 
ages, and the narrow escape of her ancestors. She described 
strange people who lived on the Piscataqua and Cocheco, 
among whom was Bantam the sorcerer. I have in my pos- 
session the wizard's " conjuring book," which he solemnly 
opened when consulted. It is a copy of Cornelius Agrippa's 
Magic J printed in 1651, dedicated to Doctor Robert Child, 
who, like Michael Scott, had learned 

" the art of glammorie 
In Padua beyond the sea," 

and who is famous in the annals of Massachusetts, where he 
was at one time a resident, as the first man who dared peti- 
tion the General Court for liberty of conscience. The full 
title of the book is Three Books of Occult Fhilosophy : hy 
Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Knight^ Doctor of both Laivs, 
Counsellor to Ccesars Sacred Majesty and Judge of the 
Prerogative Court. 



SNOW-BOUND. 

A WINTER IDYL. 

" As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so good Spirits 
which be Angels of Light are augmented not only by the Divine light 
of the Sun, but also by our conanion Wood Fire : and as the Celes- 
tial Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of Wood doth 
the same." — CoR. Agrippa, Occult Philosophy^ Book I. ch. v. 

" Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, 
Arrives the snow ; and, driving o'er the fields, 
Seems nowhere to alight ; the whited air 
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven, 
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end. 
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet 
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit 
Around the radiant fireplace, inclosed 
In a tumultuous privacy of storm." 

Emerson, The Snow-Storm, 

The sun that brief December day 
Rose cheerless over hills of gray, 
And, darkly circled, gave at noon 
A sadder light than waning moon. 
5 Slow tracing down the thickening sky 
Its mute and ominous prophecy, 
A portent seeming less than threat, 
It sank from sight before it set. 
A chill no coat, however stout, 
judg^ 10 Of homespun stuff could quite shut out, 
the Uj A hard, dull bitterness of cold, 
som^ That checked, mid- vein, the circling race 
/ 



JOHN GBEENLEAF WHITTIER. 

Of life-blood in the sharpened face, 
The coming of the snow-storm told. 
15 The wind blew east ; we heard the roar 
Of Ocean on his wintry shore, 
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there 
Beat with low rhythm our inland air. 

Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, — 

20 Brought in the wood from out of doors, 
Littered the stalls, and from the mows 
Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows : 
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn ; 
And, sharply clashing horn on horn, 

25 Impatient down the stanchion rows 
The cattle shake their walnut bows ; 
While, peering from his early perch 
Upon the scaffold's pole of birch, 
The cock his crested helmet bent 

30 And down his querulous challenge sent. 

{tin warmed by any sunset light 

■The gray day darkened into night, 
A night made hoary with the swarm 
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, 

35 As zigzag wavering to and fro 
Crossed and recrossed the winged snow : 
And ere the early bedtime came 
The white drift piled the window-frame. 
And through the glass the clothes-line posts 

40 Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. 

So all night long the storm roared on : 

The morning broke without a sun ; I 

In tiny spherule traced with lines 1 

Of Nature's geometric signs, I 



SNOW-BOUND, 5 

45 In starry flake and pellicle 

All day the hoary meteor fell ; 

And, when the second morning shone, 

We looked upon a world unknown, 

On nothing we could call our own. 
50 Around the glistening wonder bent 

The blue walls of the firmament, 

No cloud above, no earth below, — 

A universe of sky and snow ! 

The old familiar sights of ours 
55 Took marvellous shapes ; strange domes and towers 

Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood. 

Or garden-wall or belt of wood ; 

A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed, 

A fenceless drift what once was road ; 
60 The bridle-post an old man sat 

With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat ; 

The well-curb had a Chinese roof ; 

And even the long sweep, high aloof. 

In its slant splendor, seemed to tell 
65 Of Pisa's leaning miracle. 

A prompt, decisive man, no breath 
Our father wasted : ^' Boys, a path ! " 
Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy 
Count such a summons less than joy ?) 

65. The Leaning Tower of Pisa, in Italy, which inclines from 
the perpendicular a little more than six feet in eighty, is a cam- 
panile, or bell-tower, built of white marble, very beautiful, but 
so famous for its singular deflection from perpendicularity as to 
be known almost wholly as a curiosity. Opinions differ as to 
the leaning being the result of accident or design, but the better 
judgment makes it an effect of the character of the soil on which 
the town is built. The Cathedral to which it belongs has suffered 
so much from a similar cause that there is not a vertical line in it. 



6 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 

70 Our buskins on our feet we drev/ ; 

With mittened hands, and caps drawn low, 
To guard our necks and ears from snow, 

We cut the solid whiteness through ; 

And, where the drift was deepest, made 
75 A tunnel walled and overlaid 

With dazzling crystal : we had read 

Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave. 

And to our own his name we gave. 

With many a wish the luck were ours 
80 To test his lamp's supernal powers. 

We reached the barn with merry din. 

And roused the prisoned brutes within. 

The old horse thrust his long head out. 

And grave with wonder gazed about ; 
85 The cock his lusty greeting said. 

And forth his speckled harem led ; 

The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked, 

And mild reproach of hunger looked ; 

The horned patriarch of the sheep, 
90 Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep. 

Shook his sage head with gesture mute. 

And emphasized with stamp of foot. 

All day the gusty north-wind bore 
The loosening drift its breath before ; 
95 Low circling round its southern zone. 
The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone. 
No church-bell ient its Christian tone 

77. For the story of Aladdin and liis lamp see any edition of 
The Arabian Nights^ Entertainments, or Riverside Literature Se- 
ries, No. 117. 

90. A mun, or Amnion, was an Egyptian being, representing an 
attribute of Deity under the form of a ram. 



SNOW-BOUND. 

To the savage air, no social smoke 
Curled over woods of snow-hung oak, 

100 A solitude made more intense 
By dreary-voiced elements, 
The shrieking of the mindless wind, 
The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind, 
And on the glass the unmeaning beat 

105 Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet. 
Beyond the circle of our hearth 
No welcome sound of toil or mirth 
Unbound the spell, and testified 
Of human life and thought outside. 

no We minded that the sharpest ear 
The buried brooklet could not hear, 
The music of whose liquid lip 
Had been to us companionship. 
And, in our lonely life, had grown 

115 To have an almost human tone. 

As night drew on, and, from the crest 
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west, 
The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank 
From sight beneath the smothering bank, 

120 We piled with care our nightly stack 
Of wood against the chimney-back, — 
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick. 
And on its top the stout back-stick ; 
The knotty forestick laid apart, 

125 And filled between with curious art 
The ragged brush ; then, hovering near. 
We watched the first red blaze appear, 
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam 
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, 

130 Until the old, rude-furnished room 



8 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom ; 
While radiant with a mimic flame 
Outside the sparkling drift became, 
And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree 

i35„Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. 
The crane and pendent trammels showed, 
The Turk's heads on the andirons glowed ; 
While childish fancy, prompt to tell 
The meaning of the miracle, 

140 Whispered the old rhyme : " Under the tree^ 
When fire outdoors hums merrily^ 
There the witches are making tea^ 

The moon above the eastern wood 
Shone at its full ; the hill-range stood 

145 Transfigured in the silver flood. 

Its blown snows flashing cold and keen, 
Dead white, save where some sharp ravine 
Took shadow, or the sombre green 
Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black 

150 Against the whiteness of their back. 
For such a world and such a night 
Most fitting that unwarming light. 
Which only seemed where'er it fell 
To make the coldness visible. 

155 Shut in from all the world without. 
We sat the clean-winged hearth about, 
Content to let the north-wind roar 
In baffled rage at pane and door. 
While the red logs before us beat 

160 The frost-line back with tropic heat ; 
And ever, when a louder blast 
Shook beam and rafter as it passed, 




THE AVHITTIER HOME. 



The above picture is copied from a photograph of the kitchen in the 
Whittier homestead at East Haverhill, Mass., so graphically described in 
'' Snow-Bound." The room on the right, opening from the kitchen, is the 
chamber in which the poet was born. The homestead is now owned by a 
Whittier Memorial Association, and, being open to the public, is visited by 
thousands of persons annually. 



SNOW-BOUND. 9 

The merrier up its roaring draught 

The great throat of the chimney laughed, 

165 The house-dog on his paws outspread 
Laid to the fire his drowsy head, 
The cat's dark silhouette on the wall 
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall ; 
And, for the winter fireside meet, 

170 Between the andirons' straddling feet, 
The mug of cider simmered slow, 
The apples sputtered in a row, 
And, close at hand, the basket stood 
With nuts from brown October's wood. 

175 What matter how the night behaved ? 

What matter how the north-wind raved ? 

Blow high, blow low, not all its snow 

Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow. 

;^0 Time and Change ! ^ — with hair as gray 
180 As was my sire's that winter day, 

How strange it seems, with so much gone 

Of life and love, to still live on ! * 

Ah, brother! only I and thou 

Are left of all that circle now, — 
185 The dear home faces whereupon 

That fitful firelight paled and shone. 

Henceforward, listen as we will. 

The voices of that hearth are still ; 

Look where we may, the wide earth o'er, 
190 Those lighted faces smile no more. 

We tread the paths their feet have worn, 
We sit beneath their orchard trees, 
We hear, like them, the hum of bees 

And rustle of the bladed corn ; 
195 We turn the pages that they read, 



10 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

Their written words we linger o'er, 
But in the sun they east no shade, 
No voice is heard, no sign is made. 
No step is on the conscious floor ! 
200 Yet Love will dream and Faith will trust 
(Since He who knows our need is just) 
^That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. 
\ Alas for him who never sees 
'^ The stars shine through his cypress4rees ! 
205 Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 
Nor looks to see the breaking day 
Across the mournful marbles play ! 
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, 
, The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
210 That Life is ever lord of Death, 

And Love can never lose its own ! 

We sped the time with stories old. 
Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told. 
Or stammered from our school-book lore 

215 " The chief of Gambia's golden shore." 
How often since, when all the land 
Was clay in Slavery's shaping hand. 
As if a trumpet called, I 've heard 
Dame Mercy Warren's rousing word : 

^220 Does not the voice of reason cry^ 

Claim the first right which Nature gave, 

215. This line is taken from a poem entitled The African 
Chief, written by Mrs. Sarah Wentworth Morton ; the school- 
book referred to was Caleb Bingham's The American Preceptor. 

219. Mrs. Mercy Warren was the wife of James Warren, a 
prominent patriot at the beginning of the Revolution. Her 
poetry was read in an age that had in America little to read 
under that name ; her society was sought by the best men. 



SNOW-BOUND. 11 

From the red scourge of bondage fly 

Nor deign to live a hitrdened slave ! " 
Our father rode again his ride 
225 On Memphremagog's wooded side ; 
Sat down again to moose and samp 
In trapper's hut and Indian camp ; 
Lived o'er the old idyllic ease 
Beneath St. Francjois' hemlock trees ; 
230 Again for him the moonlight shone 
On Norman cap and bodiced zone ; 
Again he heard the violin play 
Which led the village dance away, 
And mingled in its merry whirl 
235 The grand am and the laughing girl. 
Or, nearer home, our steps he led 
Where Salisbury's level marshes spread 

Mile-wide as flies the laden bee ; 
Where merry mowers, hale and strong, 
240 Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along 
The low green prairies of the sea. 
We shared the fishing off Boar's Head, 
And round the rocky Isles of Shoals 
The hake-broil on the driftwood coals ; 
245 The chowder on the sand-beach made. 
Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot. 
With spoons of clam-shell from the pot. 
We heard the tales of witchcraft old. 
And dream and sign and marvel told 
250 To sleepy listeners as they lay 
Stretched idly on the salted hay. 
Adrift along the winding shores, 

When favoring breezes deigned to blow 
The square sail of the gundalow, 
255 And idle lay the useless oars. 



12 JOHN GREEN LEAF WHIT TIER, 

Our mother, while she turned her wheel 

Or run the new-knit stocking-heel, 

Told how the Indian hordes came down 

At midnight on Cochecho town, 
260 And how her own great-uncle bore 

His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore. 

Recalling, in her fitting phrase, 
So rich and picturesque and free 
(The common unrhymed poetry 
265 Of simple life and country ways), 

The story of her early days, — 

She made us welcome to her home ; 

Old hearths grew wide to give us room ; 

We stole with her a frightened look 
270 At the gray wizard's conjuring-book, 

The fame whereof went far and wide 

Through all the simple country-side ; 

We heard the hawks at twilight play, 

The boat-horn on Piscataqua, 
275 The loon's weird laughter far away ; 

We fished her little trout-brook, knew 

What flowers in wood and meadow grew. 

What sunny hillsides autumn-brown 

She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down, 
280 Saw where in sheltered cove and bay 

The ducks' black squadron anchored lay, 

And heard the wild geese calling loud 

Beneath the gray November cloud. 

Then, haply, with a look more grave, 
285 And soberer tone, some tale she gave 

From painful Sewel's ancient tome, 

259. Dover in New Hampshire. 

286. William Sewel was the historian of the Quakers. Charles 



SNOW-BOUND. 13 

Beloved in every Quaker home, 
Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom, 
Or Chalkley's Journal, old and quaint, — 
290 Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint ! — 
Who, when the dreary calms prevailed, 
And water-butt and bread-cask failed, 
And cruel, hungry eyes pursued 

Lamb seemed to have as good an opinion of the book as Whit- 
tier. In his essay, A Quakers^ Meeting, in Essays of Elia, he 
says: " Reader, if you are not acquainted with it, I would re- 
commend to you, above all church-narratives, to read SeweFs 
History of the Quakers, ... It is far more edifying and affecting 
than anything you will read of Wesley or his colleagues." 

289. Thomas Chalkley was an Englishman of Quaker parent- 
age, born in 1675, who travelled extensively as a preacher, and 
finally made his home in Philadelphia. He died in 1749 ; his 
Journal wsis first published in 1747. His own narrative of the in- 
cident which the poet relates is as follows: " To stop their mur- 
muring, I told them they should not need to cast lots, which was 
usual in such cases, which of us should die first, for I would 
freely offer up my life to do them good. One said, ^ God bless 
you ! I will not eat any of you.' Another said, * He would die 
before he would eat any of me ; ' and so said several. I can 
truly say, on that occasion, at that time, my life was not dear 
to me, and that I was serious and ingenuous in my proposition; 
and as I was leaning over the side of the vessel, thoughtfully con- 
sidering my proposal to the company, and looking in my mind to 
Him that made me, a very large dolphin came up towards the top 
or surface of the water, and looked me in the face; and I called 
the people to put a hook into the sea, and take him, for here is 
one come to redeem me (I said to them). And they put a hook 
into the sea, and the fish readily took it, and they caught him. 
He was longer than myself. I think he was about six feet long, 
and the largest that ever I saw. This plainly showed us that we 
ought not to distrust the providence of the Almighty. The peo- 
ple were quieted by this act of Providence, and murmured no 
more. We caught enough to eat plentifully of, till we got into 
the capes of Delaware." 



14 JOHN GREENLEAF WHIT TIER, 

His portly presence, mad for food, 
295 With dark hints muttered under breath 

Of casting lots for life or death, 

Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies, 

To be himself the sacrifice. 

Then, suddenly, as if to save 
300 The good man from his living grave, 

A ripple on the water grew, 

A school of porpoise flashed in view. 

"Take, eat," he said, "and be content; 

These fishes in my stead are sent 
305 By Him who gave the tangled ram " 

To spare the child of Abraham." 

Our uncle, innocent of books. 

Was rich in lore of fields and brooks, 

The ancient teachers never dumb 

310 Of Nature's unhoused lyceum. 

In moons and tides and weather wise. 
He read the clouds as prophecies. 
And foul or fair could well divine, 
By many an occult hint and sign, 

315 Holding the cunning-warded keys 
To all the woodcraft mysteries ; 
Himself to Nature's heart so near 
That all her voices in his ear 
Of beast or bird had meanings clear, 

320 Like ApoUonius of old, 

306. See Genesis xxii. 13. 

310. The measure requires the accent ly^ceum, but in stricter 
use the accent is lyce'um. 

320. A philosopher born in the first century of the Christian 
era, of whom many strange stories were told, especially regard- 
ing his converse with birds and animals. 



SNOW-BOUND, 15 

Who knew the tales the sparrows told, 

Or Hermes, who interpreted 

What the sage cranes of Nilus said ; 

A simple, guileless, childlike man, 
325 Content to live where life began ; 

Strong only on his native grounds, 

The little world of sights and sounds 

Whose girdle was the parish bounds, 

Whereof his fondly partial pride 
330 The common features magnified, 

As Surrey hills to mountains grew 

In White of Selborne's loving view, 

He told how teal and loon he shot, 

And how the eagle's eggs he got, 
335 The feats on pond and river done. 

The prodigies of rod and gun ; 

Till, warming with the tales he told. 

Forgotten was the outside cold. 

The bitter wind unheeded blew, 
340 From ripening corn the pigeons flew, 

The partridge drummed i' the wood, the mink 

Went fishing down the river-brink. 

In fields with bean or clover gay. 

The woodchuck, like a hermit gray, 
345 Peered from the doorway of his cell ; 

The muskrat plied the mason's trade, 

322. Hermes Trismegistus, a celebrated Egyptian priest and 
philosopher, to whom was attributed the revival of geometry, 
arithmetic, and art among the Egyptians. He was little later 
than ApoUonius. 

332. Gilbert White, of Selborne, England, was a clergyman 
who wrote the Natural History of Selborne, a minute, afiPection- 
ate, and charming description of what could be seen as it were 
from his own doorstep. The accuracy of his observation and 
the delightfulness of his manner have kept the book a classic. 



Iff JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

^ And tier by tier his mud- walls laid ; 
And from the shagbark overhead 

The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell. 

350 Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of cheer 
* And voice in dreams I see and hear, — 
The sweetest woman ever Fate 
Perverse denied a household mate. 
Who, lonely, homeless, not the less 

355 Found peace in love's unselfishness. 
And welcome whereso'er she went, 
A calm and gracious element. 
Whose presence seemed the sweet income 
And womanly atmosphere of home, — - 

360 Called up her girlhood memories. 
The huskings and the apple-bees, 
The sleigh-rides and the summer sails. 
Weaving through all the poor details 
And homespun warp of circumstance 

365 A golden woof-thread of romance. 
For well she kept her genial mood 
And simple faith of maidenhood ; 
Before her still a cloud-land lay. 
The mirage loomed across her way ; 

370 The morning dew, that dried so soon 
With others, glistened at her noon ; 
Through years of toil and soil and care. 
From glossy tress to thin gray hair, 
All unprofaned she held apart 

375 The virgin fancies of the heart. 
Be shame to him of woman born 
Who had for such but thought of scorUo 

There, too, our elder sister plied 
Her evening task the stand beside ; 



SNOW-BOUND, 17 

380 A full, rich nature, free to trust, 

Truthful and almost sternly just, . 

Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act, 

And make her generous thought a fact, 

Keeping with many a light disguise 
385 The secret of self-sacrifice. 

heart sore-tried ! thou hast the best 
That Heaven itself could give thee, — rest, 
Rest from all bitter thoughts and things ! 

How many a poor one's blessing went 
390 With thee beneath the low green tent 
Whose curtain never outward swings ! 

As one who held herself a part 
Of all she saw, and let her heart 

Against the household bosom lean, 
. 395 Upon the motley-braided mat 

Our youngest and our dearest sat. 
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes, 
Now bathed within the fadeless green 
And holy peace of Paradise. 
400 Oh, looking from some heavenly hill. 

Or from the shade of saintly palms, 

Or silver reach of river calms. 
Do those large eyes behold me still ? 
With me one little year ago : — 
405 The chill weight of the winter snow 

For months upon her grave has lain ; 
And now, when summer south-winds blow 

And brier and harebell bloom again, 

1 tread the pleasant paths we trod, 
410 1 see the violet-sprinkled sod, 

398. Th^ unfading green would be harsher but more correct, 
since the termination less is added to nouns and not to verbs. 



18 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak 
The hillside flowers she loved to seek, 
Yet following me where'er I went 
With dark eyes full of love's content. 
415 The birds are glad ; the brier-rose fills 
The air with sweetness ; all the hills 
Stretch green to June's unclouded sky ; 
But still I wait with ear and eye 
For something gone which should be nigh, 
420 A loss in all familiar things. 

In flower that blooms, and bird that sings. 
And yet, dear heart ! remembering thee. 

Am I not richer than of old ? 
Safe in thy immortality, 
425 What change can reach the wealth I hold? 

What chance can mar the pearl and gold 
Thy love hath left in trust with me ? 
And while in life's late afternoon, 

Where cool and long the shadows grow, 
430 1 walk to meet the night that soon 

Shall shape and shadow overflow, 
I cannot feel that thou art far, 
Since near at need the angels are ; 
And when the sunset gates unbar, 
435 Shall I not see thee waiting stand, 
And, white against the evening star. 

The welcome of thy beckoning hand ? 

Brisk wielder of the birch and rule, 
The master of the district school 

439. This schoolmaster was George Haskell, a native of Har- 
vard, Mass., who was a Dartmouth College student at the time 
referred to in the poem, and afterward became a physician. 
He removed to Illinois, where he was active in founding Shurt- 



SNOW-BOUND. 19 

440 Held at the fire his favored place ; 
Its warm glow lit a laughing face 
Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared 
The uncertain prophecy of beard. 
He teased the mitten-blinded cat, 

445 Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat, 
Sang songs, and told us what befalls 
In classic Dartmouth's college halls. 
Born the wild Northern hills among. 
From whence his yeoman father wrung 

450 By patient toil subsistence scant, 
Not competence and yet not want, 
He early gained the power to pay 
His cheerful, self-reliant way ; 
Could doff at ease his scholar's gown 

455 To peddle wares from town to town ; 
Or through the long vacation's reach 
In lonely lowland districts teach. 
Where all the droll experience found 
At stranger hearths in boarding round, 

460 The moonlit skater's keen delight, 

The sleigh-drive through the frosty night, 
The rustic party, with its rough 
Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff, 
And whirling plate, and forfeits paid, 

465 His winter task a pastime made. 

Happy the snow-locked homes wherein 
He tuned his merry violin, 

leff College. Later lie made his home in New Jersey, and aided 
in establishing an industrial school there and in laying out a 
model community. Till near the end of his own life Mr. 
Whittier could not recall the teacher's name, and Mr. Haskell 
seems never to have known that he was immortalized in Snow- 
Bound, 



20 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

Or played the athlete in the barn, 

Or held the good dame's wmdmg yarn, 
470 Or mirth-provoking versions told 

Of classic legends rare and old, 

Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome 

Had all the commonplace of home. 

And little seemed at best the odds 
475 'Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods ; 

Where Pindus-born Arachthus took 

The guise of any grist-mill brook. 

And dread Olympus at his will 

Became a huckleberry hill. 
480 A careless boy that night he seemed ; 
But at his desk he had the look 

And air of one who wisely schemed. 
And hostage from the future took 
In trained thought and lore of book. 
485 Large-brained, clear-eyed, — of such as he 

Shall Freedom's young apostles be. 

Who, following in War's bloody trail, 

Shall every lingering wrong assail ; 

All chains from limb and spirit strike, 
490 Uplift the black and white alike ; 

Scatter before their swift advance 

The darkness and the ignorance. 

The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth. 

Which nurtured Treason's monstrous growth, 
495 Made murder pastime, and the hell 

Of prison-torture possible ; 

The cruel lie of caste refute, 

476. Pindus is the mountain chain which, running from north 
to south, nearly bisects Greece. Five rivers take their rise from 
the central peak, the Aous, the Arachthus, the Haliatmon, the 
Peneus, and the Achelous. 



SNOW-BOUND. 21 

Old forms remould, and substitute 

For Slavery's lash the freeman's will, 
500 For blind routine, wise-handed skill ; 

A school-house plant on every hill, 

Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence 

The quick wires of intelligence ; 

Till North and South together brought 
505 Shall own the same electric thought, 

In peace a common flag salute. 

And, side by side in labor's free 

And unresentful rivalry. 

Harvest the fields wherein they fought. 

510 Another guest that winter night 

Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light. 

Unmarked by time, and yet not young, 

The honeyed music of her tongue 

And words of meekness scarcely told 
515 A nature passionate and bold. 

Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide, 

Its milder features dwarfed beside 

Her mibent will's majestic pride. 

She sat among us, at the best, 
520 A not unfeared, half-welcome guest, 

Rebuking with her cultured phrase 

Our homeliness of words and ways. 

(A certain pard-like, treacherous grace 

' Swayed the lithe limbs and dropped the lash, 
525 Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash ; 
And under low brows, black with night. 
Rayed out at times a dangerous light ; 

The sharp heat-lightnings of her face 

Presaging ill to him whom Fate 
530 Condemned to share her love or hate. 



^2 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

A woman tropical, intense 

In thought and act, in soul and sense, 

She blended in a like degree 

The vixen and the devotee, 
535 Revealing with each freak or feint 

The temper of Petruchio's Kate, 

The raptures of Siena's saint. 

Her tapering hand and rounded wrist 

Had facile power to form a fist ; 
540 The warm, dark languish of her eyes 

Was never safe from wrath's surprise. 

Brows saintly calm and lips devout 

Knew every change of scowl and pout ; 

And the sweet voice had notes more high 
545 And shrill for social battle-cry. 

Since then what old cathedral town 

Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown, 

What convent-gate has held its lock 

Against the challenge of her knock ! 
550 Through Smyrna's plague-hushed thoroughfares, 

Up sea-set Malta's rocky stairs, 

Gray olive slopes of hills that hem 

Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem, 

Or startling on her desert throne 
'555 The crazy Queen of Lebanon 

With claims fantastic as her own, 

Her tireless feet have held their way ; 

And still, unrestful, bowed, and gray, 

536. See Shakespeare's comedy of The Taming of the Shrew. 

637. St. Catherine of Siena, who is represented as having won- 
derful visions. She made a vow of silence for three years. 

555. An interesting account of Lady Hester Stanhope, an 
English gentlewoman who led a singular life on Mount Lebanon 
in Syria, will be found in Kinglake's Eothen, chapter viii. 



SNOW-BOUND. 23 

She watches under Eastern skies, 
560 With hope each day renewed and fresh, 
The Lord's quick coming in the flesh, 
Whereof she dreams and prophesies ! 
Where'er her troubled path may be. 
The Lord's sweet pity with her go ! 
565 The outward wayward life we see. 

The hidden springs we may not know. 
Nor is it given us to discern 

What threads the fatal sisters spun, 
Through what ancestral years has run 
570 The sorrow with the woman born, 
What forged her cruel chain of moods, 
What set her feet in solitudes. 

And held the love within her mute, 
What mingled madness in the blood, 
575 A lifelong discord and annoy. 
Water of tears with oil of joy, 
And hid within the folded bud 

Perversities of flower and fruit. 
It is not ours to separate 
580 The tangled skein of will and fate. 

To show what metes and bounds should stand 
Upon the soul's debatable land. 
And between choice and Providence 
Divide the circle of events ; 
585 But He who knows our frame is just, 
Merciful and compassionate, 

562. This " not unfeared, half-welcome guest," Miss Harriet 
Livermore, at the time of this narrative was about twenty-eight 
years old. She once went on an independent mission to the 
Western Indians, whom she, in common with some others, be- 
lieved to be remnants of the lost tribes of Israel, but much of 
her life was spent in the Orient. See the introductory note to 
this poem, page 1. 



24 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

And full of sweet assurances 
And hope for all the language is, 
That He remembereth we are dust ! 

590 At last the great logs, crumbling low, 
Sent out a dull and duller glow. 
The buirs-eye watch that hung in view, 
Ticking its weary circuit through. 
Pointed with mutely-warning sign 

595 Its black hand to the hour of nine. 
That sign the pleasant circle broke : 
My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke. 
Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray, 
And laid it tenderly away, 

600 Then roused himself to safely cover 
The dull red brand with ashes over. 
And while, with care, our mother laid 
The work aside, her steps she stayed 
One moment, seeking to express 

605 Her grateful sense of happiness 

For food and shelter, warmth and health, 
And love's contentment more than wealth, 
With simple wishes (not the weak, 
Vain prayers which no fulfilment seek, 

610 But such as warm the generous heart, 
O'er-prompt to do with Heaven its part) 
That none might lack, that bitter night, 
For bread and clothing, warmth and light. 

Within our beds awhile we heard 
615 The wind that round the gables roared, 
With now and then a ruder shock. 
Which made our very bedsteads rock. 
We heard the loosened clapboards tost. 



SNOW-BOUND. 25 

The board-nails snapping in the frost ; 
620 And on us, through the unplastered wall, 

Felt the lightsifted snow-flakes fall ; 

But sleep stole on, as sleep will do 

When hearts are light and life is new ; 

Faint and more faint the murmurs grew, 
625 Till in the summer-land of dreams 

They softened to the sound of streams, 

Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars, 

And lapsing waves on quiet shores. 

Next morn we wakened with the shout 
630 Of merry voices high and clear ; 

And saw the teamsters drawing near 

To break the drifted highways out. 

Down the long hillside treading slow 

We saw the half -buried oxen go, 
635 Shaking the snow from heads uptost. 

Their straining nostrils white with frost. 

Before our door the straggling train 

Drew up, an added team to gain. 

The elders threshed their hands a-cold, 

640 Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes 

From lip to lip ; the younger folks 

Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling, rolled. 

Then toiled again the cavalcade 

O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine, 
645 And woodland paths that wound between 

Low drooping-pine-boughs winter- weighed. 

From every barn a team afoot, 

At every house a new recruit, 

Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law, 
650 Haply the watchful young men saw 

Sweet doorway pictures of the curls 



26 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 

And curious eyes of merry girls, 
Lifting their hands in mock defence 
Against the snow-balls' compliments, 
655 And reading in each missive tost 
The charm which Eden never lost. 

We heard once more the sleigh-bells' sound ; 
And, following where the teamsters led, 
The wise old Doctor went his round, 
660 Just pausing at our door to say. 
In the brief autocratic way 
Of one who, prompt at Duty's call. 
Was free to urge her claim on all, 

That some poor neighbor sick abed 
665 At night our poor mother's aid would need. 
For, one in generous thought and deed. 

What mattered in the sufferer's sight 

The Quaker matron's inward light. 
The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed ? 
670 All hearts confess the saints elect 

Who, twain in faith, in love agree, 
And melt not in an acid sect 

The Christian pearl of charity If 

So days went on : a week had passed 
675 Since the great world was heard from last. 

The Almanac we studied o'er. 

Read and reread our little store 

Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score; 

One harmless novel, mostly hid 
680 From younger eyes, a book forbid. 

And poetry, (or good or bad, 

659. The wise old Doctor was Dr. Weld of Haverhill, an able 
man, who died at the age of ninety-six. 



SNOW-BOUND. 27 

A single book was all we had,) 

Where EUwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse, 

A stranger to the heathen Nine, 
685 Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine, 
The wars of David and the Jews. 
At last the floundering carrier bore 
The village paper to our door. 
Lo ! broadening outward as we read, 
690 To warmer zones the horizon spread ; 
In panoramic length unrolled 
We saw the marvel that it told. 
Before us passed the painted Creeks, 

And daft McGregor on his raids 
695 In Costa Rica's everglades. 
And up Taygetus winding slow 
Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks, 
A Turk's head at each saddle bow ! 
Welcome to us its week-old news, 
700 Its corner for the rustic Muse, 

Its monthly gauge of snow and rain, 

683. Thomas Ellwood, one of the Society of Friends, a con- 
temporary and friend of Milton, and the suggester of Paradise 
Regained, wrote an epic poem in five books, called Davideis, the 
life of King David of Israel. He wrote the book, we are told, 
for his own diversion, so it was not necessary that others should 
be diverted by it. Ellwood's autobiography, a quaint and de- 
lightful book, may be found in Howells's series of Choice Auto- 
biographies. 

693. Referring to the removal of the Creek Indians from 
Georgia to beyond the Mississippi. 

694. In 1822 Sir Gregor McGregor, a Scotchman, began an 
ineffectual attempt to establish a colony in Costa Kiea. 

697. Taygetus is a mountain on the Gulf of Messenia in 
Greece, and near by is the district of Maina, noted for its rob- 
bers and pirates. It was from these mountaineers that Ypsilanti, 
a Greek patriot, drew his cavalry in the struggle with Turkey 
which resulted in the independence of Greece. 



28 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

Its record, mingling in a breath 

The wedding bell and dirge of death ; 

Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale, 

705 The latest culprit sent to jail ; 
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost, 
Its vendue sales and goods at cost. 
And traffic calling loud for gain. 
We felt the stir of hall and street, 

710 The pulse of life that round us beat ; 
The chill embargo of the snow 
Was melted in the genial glow ; 
Wide swung again our ice-locked door, 
And all the world was ours once more ! 

715 Clasp, Angel of the backward look 
And folded wings of ashen gray 
And voice of echoes far away, 
The brazen covers of thy book ; 
The weird palimpsest old and vast, 

720 Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past ; 
Where, closely mingling, pale and glow 
The characters of joy and woe ; 
The monographs of outlived years, 
Or smile-illumed or dim with tears, 

725 Green hills of life that slope to death. 
And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees 
Shade off to mournful cypresses 

With the white amaranths underneath. 
Even while I look, I can but heed 

730 The restless sands' incessant fall. 
Importunate hours that hours succeed. 
Each clamorous with its own sharp need, 

And duty keeping pace with all. 
Shut down and clasp the heavy lids ; 



SNOW-BOUND. 29 

735 1 hear again the voice that bids 

The dreamer leave his dream midway 
For larger hopes and graver fears : 
Life greatens in these later years, 
The century's aloe flowers to-day ! 

740 Yet, haply, in some lull of life, 

Some Truce of God which breaks its strife, 
The worldling's eyes shall gather dew, 

Dreaming in throngf ul city ways 
Of winter joys his boyhood knew ; 

745 And dear and early friends — the few 
Who yet remain — shall pause to view 
These Flemish pictures of old days ; 
Sit with me by the homestead hearth, 
And stretch the hands of memory forth 

750 To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze ! 
And thanks untraced to lips unknown 
Shall greet me like the odors blown 
From unseen meadows newly mown. 
Or lilies floating in some pond, 

755 Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond ; 
The traveller owns the grateful sense 
Of sweetness near, he knows not whence, 
And, pausing, takes with forehead bare 
The benediction of the air. 

741. The name is drawn from a historic compact in 1040, 
when the Church forbade the barons to make any attack on 
each other between sunset on Wednesday and sunrise on the fol- 
lowing Monday, or upon any ecclesiastical fast or feast day. It 
also provided that no man was to molest a laborer working in 
the fields, or to lay hands on any implement of husbandry, on 
pain of excommunication. 

747. The Flemish school of painting was chiefly occupied with 
homely interiors. 



n. 

AMONG THE HILLS. 

PRELUDE. 

Along the roadside, like the flowers of gold 
That tawny Ineas for their gardens wrought, 
Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-rod, 
And the red pennons of the cardinal-flowers 

6 Hang motionless upon their upright staves. 
The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind. 
Wing-weary with its long flight from the south, 
Unfelt ; yet, closely scanned, yon maple leaf 
With faintest motion, as one stirs in dreams, 

10 Confesses it. The locust by the wall 
Stabs the noon-silence with his sharp alarm. 
A single hay-cart down the dusty road 
Creaks slowly, with its driver fast asleep 
On the load's top. Against the neighboring hill, 

15 Huddled along the stone wall's shady side. 
The sheep show white, as if a snowdrift still 
Defied the dog-star. Through the open door 
A drowsy smell of flowers — gray heliotrope. 
And white sweet clover, and shy mignonette — 

20 Comes faintly in, and silent chorus lends 
To the pervading symphony of peace. 

2. The Incas were the kings of the ancient Peruvians. At 
Yucay, their favorite residence, the gardens, according to Pres- 
cott, contained "forms of vegetable life skilfully imitated in 
gold and silver." See History of the Conquest of Peru, i. 130. 



AMONG THE HILLS, 31 

No time is this for hands long over-worn 

To task their strength : and (unto Him be praise 

Who giveth quietness !) the stress and strain 

25 Of years that did the work of centuries 
Have ceased, and we can draw our breath once 

more 
Freely and full. So, as yon harvesters 
Make glad their nooning underneath the elms 
With tale and riddle and old snatch of song, 

30 1 lay aside grave themes, and idly turn 
The leaves of memory's sketch-book, dreaming o'er 
Old summer pictures of the quiet hills, 
And human life, as quiet, at their feet. 

And yet not idly all. A farmer's son, 

35 Proud of field-lore and harvest craft ; and feeling 
All their fine possibilities, how rich 
And restful even poverty and toil 
Become when beauty, harmony, and love 
Sit at their humble hearth as angels sat 

40 At evening in the patriarch's tent, when man 
Makes labor noble, and his farmer's frock 
The symbol of a Christian chivalry. 
Tender and just and generous to her 
Who clothes with grace all duty ; still, I know 

45 Too well the picture has another side. 
How wearily the grind of toil goes on 
Where love is wanting, how the eye and ear 
And heart are starved amidst the plenitude 
Of nature, and how hard and colorless 

50 Is life without an atmosphere. I look 
Across the lapse of half a century, 

26. The volume in which this poem stands first, and to which 
it gives the name, was published in the fall of 1868. 



32 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 

And a call to mind old homesteads, where no flower 
Told that the spring had come, but evil weeds, 
Nightshade and rough-leaved burdock, in the place 

55 Of the sweet doorway greeting of the rose 
And honeysuckle, where the house walls seemed 
Blistering in sun, without a tree or vine 
To cast the tremulous shadow of its leaves 
Across the curtainless windows from whose panes 

60 Fluttered the signal rags of shif tlessness ; 
Within, the cluttered kitchen floor, unwashed 
(Broom-clean I think they called it) ; the best 

room 
Stifling with cellar damp, shut from the air 
In hot midsummer, bookless, pictureless 

65 Save the inevitable sampler hung 
Over the fireplace, or a mourning piece, 
A green-haired woman, peony-cheeked, beneath 
Impossible willows; the wide-throated hearth 
Bristling with faded pine-boughs half concealing 

70 The piled-up rubbish at the chimney's back ; 
And, in sad keeping with all things about them, 
Shrill, querulous women, sour and sullen men, 
Untidy, loveless, old before their time. 
With scarce a human interest save their own 

75 Monotonous round of small economies. 
Or the poor scandal of the neighborhood ; 
Blind to the beauty everywhere revealed. 
Treading the May-flowers with regardless feet ; 
For them the song-sparrow and the bobolink 

80 Sang not, nor winds made music in the leaves ; 
For them in vain October's holocaust 
Burned, gold and crimson, over all the hills, 
The sacramental mystery of the woods. 
Church-goers, fearful of the unseen Powers, 



AMONG THE HILLS. 33 

85 But grumbling over pulpit-tax and pew-rent, 
Saving, as shrewd economists, their souls 
And winter pork with the least possible outlay 
Of salt and sanctity ; in daily life 
Showing as little actual comprehension 

90 Of Christian charity and love and duty, 
As if the Sermon on the Mount had been 
Outdated like a last year's almanac : 
Rich in broad woodlands and in half-tilled fields, 
And yet so pinched and bare and comfortless, 

95 The veriest straggler limping on his rounds. 
The sun and air his sole inheritance. 
Laughed at poverty that paid its taxes, 
And hugged his rags in self-complacency ! 

Not such should be the homesteads of a land 
100 Where whoso wisely wills and acts may dwell 
As king and lawgiver, in broad-acred state, 
With beauty, art, taste, culture, books, to make 
His hour of leisure richer than a life 
Of fourscore to the barons of old time ; 
105 Our yeoman should be equal to his home, 
Set in the fair, green valleys, purple walled, 
A man to match his mountains, not to creep 
Dwarfed and abased below them. I would fain 
In this light way (of which I needs must own 
no With the knife-grinder of whom Canning sings, 

110. The Anti- Jacobin was a periodical published in England 
in 1797-98, to ridicule democratic opinions, and in it Canning, 
who afterward became premier of England, wrote many light 
verses and jeux d'' esprit, among them a humorous poem called the 
Needy Knife-Grinder, in burlesque of a poem by Southey. The 
knife-grinder is anxiously appealed to to tell his story of wrong 
and injustice, but answers as here : — 

" Story, God bless you ! I 've none to tell." 



34 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIEK 

" Story, God bless you ! I have none to tell you ! ") 
Invite the eye to see and heart to feel 
The beauty and the joy within their reach, 
Home, and home loves, and the beatitudes 

n5 Of nature free to all. Haply in years 
That wait to take the places of our own, 
Heard where some breezy balcony looks down 
On happy homes, or where the lake in the moon 
Sleeps dreaming of the mountains, fair as Ruth, 

120 In the old Hebrew pastoral, at the feet 
Of Boaz, even this simple lay of mine 
May seem the burden of a prophecy. 
Finding its late fulfilment in a change 
Slow as the oak's growth, lifting manhood up 

125 Through broader culture, finer manners, love, 
And reverence, to the level of the hills. 

O Golden Age, whose light is of the dawn. 
And not of sunset, forward, not behind, 
Flood the new heavens and earth, and with thee 
bring 

130 All the old virtues, whatsoever things 
Are pure and honest and of good repute, 
But add thereto whatever bard has sung 
Or seer has told of when in trance and dream 
They saw the Happy Isles of prophecy ! 

135 Let Justice hold her scale, and Truth divide 
Between the right and wrong ; but give the heart 
The freedom of its fair inheritance ; 

121. See Ruth iii, 

134. The Fortunate Isles, or Isles of the Blest, were imaginary 
islands in the West, in classic mythology, set in a sea which 
was warmed by the rays of the declining sun. Hither the favo- 
rites of the gods were borne, and here they dwelt in endless joy. 



AMONG THE HILLS. 35 

Let the poor prisoner, cramped and starved so 

long, 
At Nature's table feast his ear and eye 

140 With joy and wonder ; let all harmonies 
Of sound, form, color, motion, wait upon 
The princely guest, whether in soft attire 
Of leisure clad, or the coarse frock of toil, 
And, lending life to the dead form of faith, 

145 Give human nature reverence for the sake 
Of One who bore it, making it divine 
With the ineffable tenderness of God ; 
Let common need, the brotherhood of prayer. 
The heirship of an unknown destiny, 

150 The unsolved mystery round about us, make 
A man more precious than the gold of Ophir, 
Sacred, inviolate, unto whom all things 
Should minister, as outward types and signs 
Of the eternal beauty which fulfils 

155 The one great purpose of creation. Love, 
The sole necessity of Earth and Heaven ! 



AMONG THE HILLS. 

For weeks the clouds had raked the hills 

And vexed the vales with raining. 
And all the woods were sad with mist, 
160 And all the brooks complaining. 

At last, a sudden night-storm tore 
The mountain veils asunder. 

And swept the valleys clean before 
The besom of the thunder. 



36 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 

165 Through Sandwich Notch the west-wind sang 
Good morrow to the cotter ; 
And once again Chocorua's horn 
Of shadow pierced the water. 

Above his broad lake Ossipee, 
170 Once more the sunshine wearing, 
Stooped, tracing on that silver shield 
His grim armorial bearing. 

Clear drawn against the hard blue sky 
The peaks had winter's keenness ; 
175 And, close on autumn's frost, the vales 
Had more than June's fresh greenness. 

Again the sodden forest floors 

With golden lights were checkered. 
Once more rejoicing leaves in wind 
180 And sunshine danced and flickered. 

It was as if the summer's late 

Atoning for its sadness 
Had borrowed every season's charm 

To end its days in gladness. 

185 1 call to mind those banded vales 
Of shadow and of shining. 
Through which, my hostess at my side, 
I drove m day's declining. 

165. Sandwicli Notch, Chocorua Mountain, Ossipee Lake, and 
the Bearcamp River are all striking features of the scenery in 
that part of New Hampshire which lies just at the entrance of 
the White Mountain region. Many of Whittier's most graceful 
poems are drawn from the suggestions of this country, where 
he often spent the summer months, and a mountain near West 
Ossipee has received his name. 



AMONG THE HILLS. 37 

We held our sideling way above 
190 The river's whitening shallows, 

By homesteads old, with wide-flung barns 
Swept through and through by swallows, — 

By maple orchards, belts of pine 
And larches climbing darkly 
195 The mountain slopes, and, over all. 
The great peaks rising starkly. 

You should have seen that long hill-range 

With gaps of brightness riven, — 
How through each pass and hollow streamed 
200 The purpling lights of heaven, — 

Eivers of gold-mist flowing down 

From far celestial fountains, — 
The great sun flaming through the rifts 

Beyond the wall of mountains ! 

205 We paused at last where home-bound cows 
Brought down the pasture's treasure, 
And in the barn the rhythmic flails 
Beat out a harvest measure. 

We heard the night hawk's sullen plunge, 
210 The crow his tree-mates calling : 

The shadows lengthening down the slopes 
About our feet were falling, 

And through them smote the level sun 
In broken lines of splendor, 
215 Touched the gray rocks and made the green 
Of the shorn grass more tender. 



38 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

The maples bending o'er the gate, 
Their arch of leaves just tinted 
With yellow warmth, the golden glow 
220 Of coming autumn hinted. 

Keen white between the farm-house showed, 
And smiled on porch and trellis 

The fair democracy of flowers 
That equals cot and palace. 

225 And weaving garlands for her dog, 
'Twixt chidings and caresses, 
A human flower of childhood shook 
The sunshine from her tresses. 

On either hand we saw the signs 
230 Of fancy and of shrewdness, 

Where taste had wound its arms of vines 
Round thrift's uncomely rudeness. 

The sun-brown farmer in his frock 
Shook hands, and called to Mary : 
235 Bare-armed, as Juno might, she came, 
White-aproned from her dairy. 

Her air, her smile, her motions, told 

Of womanly completeness ; 
A music as of household songs 
240 Was in her voice of sweetness. 

Not beautiful in curve and line 
But something more and better, 

The secret charm eluding art, 
Its spirit, not its letter ; — 



AMONG THE HILLS. 39 

245 An inborn grace that nothing lacked 
Of culture or appliance, — 
The warmth of genial courtesy, 
The calm of self-reliance. 

Before her queenly womanhood 
250 How dared our hostess utter 
The paltry errand of her need 
To bt$y her fresh-churned butter ? 

She led the way with housewife pride. 
Her goodly store disclosing, 
255 Full tenderly the golden balls 

With practised hands disposing. 

Then, while along the western hills 
We watched the changeful glory 
Of sunset, on our homeward way, 
260 I heard her simple story. 

The early crickets sang ; the stream 
Plashed through my friend's narration : 

Her rustic patois of the hills 
Lost in my free translation. 

265 '' More wise," she said, " than those who swarm 
Our hills in middle summer, 
She came, when June's first roses blow. 
To greet the early comer. 

" From school and ball and rout she came, 
270 The city's fair, pale daughter. 
To drink the wine of mountain air 
Beside the Bearcamp Water. 



40 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

'^ Her step grew firmer on the hills 
That watch our homesteads over ; 
275 On cheek and lip, from summer fields, 
She caught the bloom of clover. 

" For health comes sparkling in the streams 

From cool Chocorua stealing : 
There 's iron in our Northern winds ; 
280 Our pines are trees of healing. ** 

" She sat beneath the broad-armed elms 
That skirt the mowing-meadow, 

And watched the gentle west-wind weave 
The grass with shine and shadow. 

285 " Beside her, from the summer heat 
To share her grateful screening. 
With forehead bared, the farmer stood. 
Upon his pitchfork leaning. 

" Framed in its damp, dark locks, his face 
290 Had nothing mean or common, — 
Strong, manly, true, the tenderness 
And pride beloved of woman. 

" She looked up, glowing with the health 
The country air had brought her, 
295 And, laughing, said : ' You lack a wife. 
Your mother lacks a daughter. 

" ' To mend your frock and bake your bread 

You do not need a lady : 
Be sure among these brown old homes 
300 Is some one waiting ready, — 



AMONG THE HILLS. 41 

" ' Some fair, sweet girl, with skilful hand 

And cheerful heart for treasure, 
Who never played with ivory keys, 

Or danced the polka's measure.' 

305 " He bent his black brows to a frown, 
He set his white teeth tightly. 
' *T is well,' he said, ^ for one like you 
To choose for me so lightly. 

" ' You think, because my life is rude, 
310 I take no note of sweetness : 
I tell you love has naught to do 
With meetness or unmeetness. 

" ' Itself its best excuse, it asks 
No leave of pride or fashion 
315 When silken zone or homespun frock 
It stirs with throbs of passion. 

" ' You think me deaf and blind : you bring 

Your winning graces hither 
As free as if from cradle-time 
320 We two had played together. 

" ' You tempt me with your laughing eyes, 

Your cheek of sundown's blushes, 
A motion as of waving grain, 

A music as of thrushes. 

325 " ' The plaything of your summer sport. 
The spells you weave around me 
You cannot at your will undo. 
Nor leave me as you found me. 



42 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

" ' You go as lightly as you came, 
330 Your life is well without me ; 

What care you that these hills will close 
Like prison-walls about me ? 

" ' No mood is mine to seek a wife, 
Or daughter for my mother : 
335 Who loves you loses in that love 
All power to love another ! 

" ' I dare your pity or your scorn, 

With pride your own exceeding ; 
I fling my heart into your lap 
340 Without a word of pleading.' 

" She looked up in his face of pain, 

So archly, yet so tender : 
' And if I lend you mine,' she said, 

' Will you forgive the lender ? 

345 " ' Nor frock nor tan can hide the man ; 
And see you not, my farmer, 
How weak and fond a woman waits 
Behind this silken armor ? 

" ' I love you : on that love alone, 
350 And not my worth, presuming. 
Will you not trust for summer fruit 
The tree in May-day blooming ? ' 

" Alone the hangbird overhead. 
His hair-swung cradle straining, 
355 Looked down to see love's miracle, — 
The giving that is gaining 



AMONG THE HILLS. 43 

*' And so the farmer found a wife, 

His mother found a daughter : 
There looks no happier home than hers 
360 On pleasant Bearcamp Water. 

'' Flowers spring to blossom where she walks 

The careful ways of duty ; 
Our hard, stiff lines of life with her 

Are flowing curves of beauty. 

365 " Our homes are cheerier for her sake, 
Our door-yards brighter blooming, 
And all about the social air 
Is sweeter for her coming. 

'' Unspoken homilies of peace 
370 Her daily life is preaching ; 
The still refreshment of the dew 
Is her unconscious teaching. 

" And never tenderer hand than hers 
Unknits the brow of ailing ; 
375 Her garments to the sick man's ear 
Have music in their trailing. 

" And when, in pleasant harvest moons. 

The youthful huskers gather, 
Or sleigh-drives on the mountain ways 
380 Defy the winter weather, — 

" In sugar-camps, when south and warm 
The winds of March are blowing. 

And sweetly from its thawing veins 
The maple's blood is flowing, — 



44 JOHN GREENLEAF WHIT TIER, 

385 " In summer, where some lilied pond 
Its virgin zone is baring, 
Or where the ruddy autumn fire 
Lights up the apple-paring, — 

" The coarseness of a ruder time 
390 Her finer mirth displaces, 
A subtler sense of pleasure fills 
Each rustic sport she graces. 

" Her presence lends its warmth and health 
To all who come before it. 
395 If woman lost us Eden, such 
As she alone restore it. 

" For larger life and wiser aims 

The farmer is her debtor ; 
Who holds to his another's heart 
400 Must needs be worse or better, 

" Through her his civic service shows 

A purer-toned ambition ; 
No double consciousness divides 

The man and politician. 

405 " In party's doubtful ways he trusts 
Her instincts to determine ; 
At the loud polls, the thought of her 
Recalls Christ's Mountain Sermon. 

" He owns her logic of the heart, 
410 And wisdom of unreason. 

Supplying, while he doubts and weighs, 
The needed word in season. 



AMONG THE HILLS. 45 

'' He sees with pride her richer thought, 
Her fancy's freer ranges ; 
415 And love thus deepened to respect 
Is proof against all changes. 

" And if she walks at ease in ways 

His feet are slow to travel, 
And if she reads with cultured eyes 
420 What his may scarce unravel, 

" Still clearer, for her keener sight 

Of beauty and of wonder. 
He learns the meaning of the hills 

He dwelt from childhood under. 

425 '' And higher, warmed with summer lights, 
Or winter-crowned and hoary. 
The rigid horizon lifts for him 
Its inner veils of glory. 

" He has his own free, bookless lore, 
430 The lessons nature taught him, 
The wisdom which the woods and hills 
And toiling men have brought him : 

" The steady force of will whereby 
Her flexile grace seems sweeter ; 
435 The sturdy counterpoise which makes 
Her woman's life completer : 

" A latent fire of soul which lacks 

No breath of love to fan it ; 
And wit, that, like his native brooks, 
440 Plays over solid granite. 



46 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 

" How dwarfed against his manliness 

She sees the poor pretension, 
The wants, the aims, the follies, born 

Of fashion and convention ! 

445 " How life behind its accidents 

Stands strong and self-sustaining. 
The human fact transcending all 
The losing and the gaining. 

" And so, in grateful interchange 
450 Of teacher and of hearer, 

Their lives their true distinctness keep 
While daily drawing nearer. 

" And if the husband or the wife 
In home's strong light discovers 
455 Such slight defaults as failed to meet 
The blinded eyes of lovers, 

" Why need we care to ask ? — who dreams 

Without their thorns of roses. 
Or wonders that the truest steel 
460 The readiest spark discloses ? 

" For still in mutual sufferance lies 

The secret of true living : 
Love scarce is love that never knows 

The sweetness of forgiving. 

465 " We send the Squire to General Court, 
He takes his young wife thither ; 

465. The General Court is the ofBcial designation of the legis- 
lative body in New Hampshire and in Massachusetts. 



AMONG THE HILLS. 47 

No prouder man election day 

Rides through the sweet June weather. 

" He sees with eyes of manly trust 
m AH hearts to her inclining ; 
Not less for him his household light 
That others share its shining." 

Thus, while my hostess spake, there grew 
Before me, warmer tinted 
475 And outlined with a tenderer grace, 
The picture that she hinted. 

The sunset smouldered as we drove 

Beneath the deep hill-shadows. 
Below us wreaths of white fog walked 
480 Like ghosts the haunted meadows. 

Sounding the summer night, the stars 
Dropped down their golden plummets ; 

The pale arc of the Northern lights 
Rose o'er the mountain summits, — 

485 Until, at last, beneath its bridge. 
We heard the Bearcamp flowing. 
And saw across the mapled lawn 

The welcome home-lights glowing ; — 

And, musing on the tale I heard, 
490 'T were well, thought I, if often 
To rugged farm-life came the gift 
To harmonize and soften ; — 

If more and more we found the troth 
Of fact and fancy plighted. 



48 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 

495 And culture's cliarm and labor's strength 
In rural homes united, — 

The simple life, the homely hearth, 

With beauty's sphere surrounding, 
And blessing toil where toil abounds 
500 With graces more abounding. 



III. 

SONGS OF LABOR. 

The Songs of Labor were written in 1845 and 1846, and printed 
first in mag-azines. They reflect the working* life of New England at 
that time, before the great changes were wrought which have nearly 
put an end to some of the forms of labor, the praises of which here 
are sung. The Songs were collected into a volume, entitled Songs of 
Labor and other Poems, in 1850, and the following Dedication was then 
prefixed. 

DEDICATION. 

I WOULD the gift I offer here 

Might graces from thy favor take, 
And, seen through Friendship's atmosphere. 
On softened lines and coloring, wear 
5 The unaccustomed light of beauty, for thy sake. 

Few leaves of Fancy's spring remain : 

But what I have I give to thee, 
The o'er-sunned bloom of summer's plain, 
And paler flowers, the latter rain 
10 Calls from the westering slope of life's autumnal 
lea. 

Above the fallen groves of green, 

Where youth's enchanted forest stood. 
Dry root and mossed trunk between, 
A sober after-growth is seen, 
15 As springs the pine where falls the gay-leafed maple 
wood ! 



50 JOHN GREENLEAF WHIT TIER. 

Yet birds will sing, and breezes play 

Their leaf -harps in the sombre tree ; 
And through the bleak and wintry day 
It keeps its steady green alway, — 
20 So, even my after-thoughts may have a charm for 
thee. 

Art's perfect forms no moral need, 

And beauty is its own excuse ; 
But for the dull and flowerless weed 
Some healing virtue still must plead, 
25 And the rough ore must find its honors in its use. 

So haply these, my simple lays 

Of homely toil, may serve to show 
The orchard bloom and tasselled maize 
That skirt and gladden duty's ways, 
30 The unsung beauty hid life's common things below. 

Haply from them the toiler, bent 

Above his forge or plough, may gain 
A manlier spirit of content. 
And feel that life is wisest spent 
35 Where the strong working hand makes strong the 
working brain. 

The doom which to the guilty pair 

Without the walls of Eden came. 
Transforming sinless ease to care 
And rugged toil, no more shall bear 
40 The burden of old crime, or mark of primal shame. 

22. "For the idea of this line," says Mr. Whittier, '•I am in- 
debted to Emerson in his inimitable sonnet to the Rhodora: — 

'"If eyes wer6 made for seeing, 
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.' " 



SONGS OF LABOR. 51 

A blessing now, a curse no more ; 

Since He, whose name we breathe with awe, 
The coarse mechanic vesture wore, 
A poor man toiling with the poor, 
45 In labor, as in prayer, fulfilling the same law. 



THE SHOEMAKERS. 

Ho ! workers of the old time styled 

The Gentle Craft of Leather ! 
Young brothers of the ancient guild, 

Stand forth once more together ! 
50 Call out again your long array. 

In the olden merry manner ! 
Once more, on gay St. Crispin's day, 

Fling out your blazoned banner ! 

Rap, rap ! upon the well-worn stone 
55 How falls the polished hammer ! 
Eap, rap ! the measured sound has grown 

A quick and merry clamor. 
Now shape the sole ! now deftly curl 
The glossy vamp around it, 
60 And bless the while the bright-eyed girl 
Whose gentle fingers bound it ! 

For you, along the Spanish main 
A hundred keels are ploughing ; 

52. October 25. St. Crispin and his brother Crispinian were 
said to be martyrs of the third century who while preaching the 
gospel had made their living by shoemaking. 

62. A name given to the northern coast of South America 
when it was taken possession of by the Spaniards. 



62 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

For you, the Indian on the plain 
65 His lasso-coil is throwing ; 
For you, deep glens with hemlock dark 

The woodman's fire is lighting ; 
For you, upon the oak's gray bark, 

The woodman's axe is smiting. 

70 For you, from Carolina's pine 
The rosin-gum is stealing ; 
For you, the dark-eyed Florentine 

Her silken skein is reeling ; 
For you, the dizzy goatherd roams 
75 His rugged Alpine ledges ; 
For you, round all her shepherd homes. 
Bloom England's thorny hedges. 

The foremost still, by day or night, 

On moated mound or heather, 

80 Where'er the need of trampled right 

Brought toiling men together ; 

Where the free burghers from the wall 

Defied the mail-clad master. 
Than yours, at Freedom's trumpet-call, 
85 No craftsman rallied faster. 

Let foplings sneer, let fools deride. 

Ye heed no idle scorner ; 
Free hands and hearts are still your pride, 

And duty done, your honor. 
90 Ye dare to trust, for honest fame, 

The jury Time empanels, 

72. So associated was Florence, Italy, in the minds of people 
with the manufacture of sewing silk, that when the industry- 
was set up in the neighborhood of Northampton, Mass., the fac- 
tory village took the name of Florence. 



SONGS OF LABOR. 53 

And leave to truth each noble name 
Which glorifies yoUr annals. 

Thy songs, Hans Sachs, are living yet, 
95 In strong and hearty German ; 
And Bloom.field's lay, and Gifford's wit, 

And patriot fame of Sherman ; 
Still from his book, a mystic seer, 
The soul of Behmen teaches, 
100 And England's priestcraft shakes to hear 
Of Fox's leathern breeches. 

The foot is yours ; v^here'er it falls. 
It treads your well-wrought leather 

On earthen floor, in marble halls, 
105 On carpet, or on heather. 

Still there the sweetest charm is found 
Of matron grace or vestal's, 

As Hebe's foot bore nectar round 
Among the old celestials ! 

no Rap, rap ! your stout and rough brogan, 
With footsteps slow and weary, 

94. See Longfellow's poem, Nuremberg^ for a reference to 
Hans Sachs, the cobbler poet. 

96. Robert Bloomfield, an English poet, author of The Farm- 
er's Boy, was bred a shoemaker, as was William Gifford, a wit 
and satirist, and first editor of the Quarterly Review, but Gifford 
hated his craft bitterly. 

97. Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Declaration of 
Independence, was at one time a shoemaker in New Milford, 
Connecticut. 

99. Jacob Behmen, or Boehme, a German visionary of the 
17th century. 

101. George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, or 
Quakers, as they are more commonly called. 



54 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIEE, 

May wander where the sky's blue span 
Shuts down upon the prairie. 

On Beauty's foot your slippers glance, 
ns By Saratoga's fountains, 

Or twinkle down the summer dance 
Beneath the Crystal Mountains ! 

The red brick to the mason's hand. 
The brown earth to the tiller's, 
120 The shoe in yours shall wealth command. 
Like fairy Cinderella's ! 
As they who shunned the household maid 

Beheld the crown upon her. 
So all shall see your toil repaid 
125 With hearth and home and honor. 

Then let the toast be freely quaffed. 

In water cool and brimming, — 
'^ All honor to the good old Craft, 

Its merry men and women ! " 
130 Call out again your long array. 

In the old time's pleasant manner : 
Once more, on gay St. Crispin's day. 

Fling out his blazoned banner ! 



THE FISHERMEN. 

HuERAH ! the seaward breezes 
135 Sweep down the bay amain ; 
Heave up, my lads, the anchor ! 

Eun up the sail again ! 

» 

117. A name early given to the White Mountains from the 
crystals found there by the first explorers, who thought them 
diamonds. 



SONGS OF LABOR. 65 

Leave to the lubber landsmen 
The rail-car and the steed ; 
140 The stars of heaven shall guide us, 
The breath of heaven shall speed. 

From the hill-top looks the steeple, 
And the light-house from the sand ; 

And the scattered pines are waving 
145 Their farewell from the land. 

One glance, my lads, behind us, 
For the homes we leave one sigh. 

Ere we take the change and chances 
Of the ocean and the sky. 

150 Now, brothers, for the icebergs 
Of frozen Labrador, 
Floating spectral in the moonshine, 

Along the low, black shore ! 

Where like snow the gannet's feathers 

155 On Brador's rocks are shed. 

And the noisy murr are flying. 

Like black scuds, overhead ; 

Where in mist the rock is hiding. 
And the sharp reef lurks below, 
160 And the white squall smites in summer. 
And the autumn tempests blow ; 
Where through gray and rolling vapor. 

From evening unto morn, 
A thousand boats are hailing, 
165 Horn answering unto horn. 

Hurrah ! for the Ked Island, 

With the white cross on its crown ! 



56 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 

Hurrah ! for Meccatina, 

And its mountains bare and brown ! 
170 Where the Caribou's tall antlers 
O'er the dwartwood freely toss. 
And the footstep of the Mickmack 
Has no sound upon the moss. 

There we 'II drop our lines, and gather 
175 Old Ocean's treasures in, 
Where'er the mottled mackerel 

Turns up a steel-dark fin. 
The sea 's our field of harvest, 
Its scaly tribes our grain ; 
180 We '11 reap the teeming waters 

As at home they reap the plain ! 

Our wet hands spread the carpet, 

And light the hearth of home ; 
From our fish, as in the old time, 
185 The silver coin shall come. 
As the demon fled the chamber 

Where the fish of Tobit lay, 
So ours from all our dwellings 

Shall frighten Want away. 

190 Though the mist upon our jackets 
In the bitter air congeals, 
And our lines wind stiff and slowly 

Erom off the frozen reels ; 
Though the fog be dark around us, 
195 And the storm, blow high and loud. 
We will whistle down the wild wind. 
And laugh beneath the cloud ! 
187. See the story in the Book of ToMt, one of the Apocrypha. 



SONGS OF LABOR, 57 

In the darkness as in daylight. 
On the water as on land, 
200 God's eye is looking on us, 

And beneath us is His hand ! 
Death will find us soon or later, 

On the deck or in the cot ; 
And we cannot meet him better 
205 Than in working out our lot. 

Hurrah ! hurrah ! the west-wind 

Comes freshening down the bay, 
The rising sails are filling ; 

Give way, my lads, give way ! 
210 Leave the coward landsman clinging 

To the dull earth, like a weed ; 
The stars of heaven shall guide us. 

The breath of heaven shall speed! 



THE LUMBERMEN. 

Wildly round our woodland quarters 
215 Sad-voiced Autumn grieves ; 
Thickly down these swelling waters 

Float his fallen leaves. 
Through the tall and naked timber, 
Column-like and old, 
220 Gleam the sunsets of November, 
From their skies of gold. 

O'er us, to the southland heading. 

Screams the gray wild-goose ; 
On the night-frost sounds the treading 
225 Of the brindled moose. 



58 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

Noiseless creeping, while we 're sleeping, 

Frost his task-work plies ; 
Soon, his icy bridges heaping, 

Shall our log-piles rise. 

230 When, with sounds of smothered thunder, 
On some night of rain, 
Lake and river break asunder 

Winter's weakened chain, 
Down the wild March flood shall bear them 
235 To the saw-mill's wheel. 

Or where Steam, the slave, shall tear them 
With his teeth of steel. 

Be it starlight, be it moonlight, 
In these vales below, 
240 When the earliest beams of sunlight 
Streak the mountain's snow, 
Crisps the hoar-frost, keen and early, 

To our hurrying feet, 
And the forest echoes clearly 
245 AH our blows repeat. 

Where the crystal Ambijejis 

Stretches broad and clear, 
And Millnoket's pine-black ridges 

Hide the browsing deer ; 
250 Where, through lakes and wide morasses, 

Or through rocky walls, 
Swift and strong, Penobscot passes 

White with foamy falls ; 

Where, through clouds, are glimpses given 
255 Of Katahdin's sides, — 



SONGS OF LABOR, 69 

Rock and forest piled to heaven, 

Torn and ploughed by slides ! 
Far below, the Indian trapping, 

In the sunshine warm ; 
260 Far above, the snow-cloud wrapping 

Half the peak in storm ! 

Where are mossy carpets better 

Than the Persian weaves. 
And than Eastern perfumes sweeter 
265 Seem the fading leaves ; 
And a music wild and solemn, 

From the pine-tree's height. 
Rolls its vast and sea-like volume 

On the wind of night ; 

270 Make we here our camp of winter ; 
And, through sleet and snow. 
Pitchy knot and beechen splinter 

On our hearth shall glow. 
Here, with mirth to lighten duty, 
275 We shall lack alone 

Woman's smile and girlhood's beauty, 
Childhood's lisping tone. 

But their hearth is brighter burning 
For our toil to-day ; 
280 And the welcome of returning 
Shall our loss repay. 
When, like seamen from the waters. 

From the woods we come, 
Greeting sisters, wives, and daughters, 
285 Angels of our home ! 



60 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

Not for us the measured ringing 

From the village spire, 
Not for us the Sabbath singing 

Of the sweet- voiced choir ; 
290 Ours the old, majestic temple, 

Where God's brightness shines 
Down the dome so grand and ample, 

Propped by lofty pines ! 

Through each branch-enwoven skylight, 
295 Speaks He in the breeze, 
As of old beneath the twilight 

Of lost Eden's trees ! 
For His ear, the inward feeling 
Needs no outward tongue ; 
300 He can see the spirit kneeling 
While the axe is swung. 

Heeding truth alone, and turning 

From the false and dim. 
Lamp of toil or altar burning 
305 Are alike to Him. 

Strike, then, comrades ! Trade is waiting 

On our rugged toil ; 
Far ships waiting for the freighting 

Of our woodland spoil ! 

310 Ships, whose traffic links these highlands. 
Bleak and cold, of ours. 
With the citron-planted islands 

Of a clime of flowers ; 
To our frosts the tribute bringing 
315 Of eternal heats ; 



SONGS OF LABOR. 61 

In our lap of winter flinging 
Tropic fruits and sweets. 

Cheerly, on the axe of labor, 
Let the sunbeams dance, 
320 Better than the flash of sabre 
Or the gleam of lance ! 
Strike ! With every blow is given 

Freer sun and sky, 
And the long-hid earth to heaven 
325 Looks, with wondering eye ! 

Loud behind us grow the murmurs 

Of the age to come ; 
Clang of smiths, and tread of farmers, 

Bearing harvest home ! 
330 Here her virgin lap with treasures 

Shall the green earth fill ; 
Waving wheat and golden maize-ears 

Crown each beechen hill. 

Keep who will the city's alleys, 
335 Take the smooth-shorn plain ; 
Give to us the cedarn valleys, 
Rocks and hills of Maine ! 
In our North-land, wild and woody, 
Let us still have part ; 
340 Eugged nurse and mother sturdy, 
Hold us to thy heart ! 

Oh, our free hearts beat the warmer 

For thy breath of snow ; 
And our tread is all the firmer 
345 For thy rocks below. 



62 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

Freedom, hand in hand with labor, 
Walketh strong and brave ; 

On the forehead of his neighbor 
No man writeth Slave ! 

350 Lo, the day breaks ! old Katahdin's 
Pine-trees show its fires. 
While from these dim forest gardens 

Kise their blackened spires. 
Up, my comrades ! up and doing ! 
366 Manhood's rugged play 
Still renewing, bravely hewing 
Through the world our way ! 



THE SHIP-BUILDERS. 

The sky is ruddy in the east, 
The earth is gray below, 
360 And, spectral in the river-mist. 
The ship's white timbers show. 
Then let the sounds of measured stroke 

And grating saw begin ; 
The broad-axe to the gnarled oak, 
365 The mallet to the pin ! 

Hark ! roars the bellows, blast on blast, 

The sooty smithy jars, 
And fire-sparks, rising far and fast. 

Are fading with the stars. 
370 All day for us the smith shall stand 

Beside that flashing forge ; 
All day for us his heavy hand 

The groaning anvil scourge. 



SONGS OF LABOR. 63 

From far-off liills, the panting team 
S76 For us is toiling near ; 

For us the raftsmen down the stream 

Their island barges steer. 
Rings out for us the axe-man's stroke 
In forests old and still ; 
380 For us the century-circled oak 
Falls crashing down his hill. 

Up ! up ! in nobler toil than ours 

No craftsmen bear a part : 
We make of Nature's giant powers 
385 The slaves of human Art. 
Lay rib to rib and beam to beam, 

And drive the treenails free ; 
Nor faithless joint nor yawning seam 

Shall tempt the searching sea ! 

390 Where'er the keel of our good ship 
The sea's rough field shall plough ; 
Where'er her tossing spars shall drip 

With salt-spray caught below ; 
That ship must heed her master's beck, 
395 Her helm obey his hand, 

And seamen tread her reeling deck 
As if they trod the land. 

Her oaken ribs the vulture-beak 
Of Northern ice may peel ; 
400 The sunken rock and coral peak 
May grate along her keel ; 
And know we well the painted shell 

We give to wind and wave, 
Must float, the sailor's citadel, 
405 Or sink, the sailor's grave ! 



64 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 

Ho ! strike away the bars and blocks, 

And set the good ship free ! 
Why lingers on these dusty rocks 

The young bride of the sea ? 
410 Look ! how she moves adown the grooves, 

In graceful beauty now ! 
How lowly on the breast she loves 

Sinks down her virgin prow ! 

God bless her ! wheresoever the breeze 
415 Her snowy wing shall fan, 
Aside the frozen Hebrides 

Or sultry Hindostan ! 
Where'er, in mart or on the main. 
With peaceful flag unfurled, 
420 She helps to wind the silken chain 
Of commerce round the world ! 

Speed on the ship ! But let her bear 

No merchandise of sin. 
No groaning cargo of despair 
425 Her roomy hold within ; 

No Lethean drug for Eastern lands. 

Nor poison-draught for ours ; 
But honest fruits of toiling hands 

And Nature's sun and showers. 

430 Be hers the Prairie's golden grain. 
The Desert's golden sand, 
The clustered fruits of sunny Spain, 

The spice of Morning-land ! 
Her pathway on the open main 
435 May blessings follow free. 

And glad hearts welcome back again 
Her white sails from the sea ! 



SONGS OF LABOR. 65 



THE DKOVERS. 



Through heat and cold, and shower and sun, 
Still onward cheerily driving ! 
440 There 's life alone in duty done, 
And rest alone in striving. 
But see ! the day is closing cool, 
The woods are dim before us ; 
The white fog of the wayside pool 
445 Is creeping slowly o'er us. 

The night is falling, comrades mine, 

Our footsore beasts are weary, 
And through yon elms the tavern sign 

Looks out upon us cheery. 
450 The landlord beckons from his door. 

His beechen fire is glowing ; 
These ample barns, with feed in store, 

Are filled to overflowing. 

From many a valley frowned across 
455 By brows of rugged mountains ; 

From hillsides where, through spongy moss, 

Gush out the river fountains ; 
From quiet farm-fields, green and low, 
And bright with blooming clover ; 
460 From vales of corn the wandering crow 
No richer hovers over, — 

Day after day our way has been 
O'er many a hill and hollow ; 
By lake and stream, by wood and glen, 
465 Our stately drove we follow. 



66 JOHN GREEN LEAF WHIT TIER. 

Througli dust-clouds rising thick and dun 

As smoke of battle o'er us, 
Their white horns glisten in the sun, 

Like plumes and crests before us. 

470 We see them slowly climb the hill. 
As slow behind it sinking ; 
Or, thronging close, from roadside riU, 

Or sunny lakelet, drinking. 
Now crowding in the narrow road, 
475 In thick and struggling masses. 
They glare upon the teamster's load, 
Or rattling coach that passes. 

Anon, with toss of horn and tail, 
And paw of hoof, and bellow, 
480 They leap some farmer's broken pale, 
O'er meadow-close or fallow. 
Forth comes the startled goodman ; forth 

Wife, children, house-dog sally, 
Till once more on their dusty path 
485 The baffled truants rally. 

We drive no starvelings, scraggy grown, 

Loose-legged, and ribbed and bony, 
Like those who grind their noses down 

On pastures bare and stony, — 
490 Lank oxen, rough as Indian dogs, 

And cows too lean for shadows^ 
Disputing feebly with the frogs 

The crop of saw-grass meadows ! 

In our good drove, so sleek and fair, 
495 No bones of leanness rattle, 



SONGS OF LABOR. 67 

No tottering hide-bound ghosts are there, 

Or Pharaoh's evil cattle. 
Each stately beeve bespeaks the hand 

That fed him unrepining ; 
500 The fatness of a goodly land 

In each dun hide is shining. 

We 've sought them where, in warmest nooks, 

The freshest feed is growing, 
By sweetest springs and clearest brooks 
505 Through honeysuckle flowing ; 
Wherever hillsides, sloping south. 

Are bright with early grasses. 
Or, tracking green the lowland's drouth. 

The mountain streamlet passes. 

510 But now the day is closing cool. 
The woods are dim before us, 
The white fog of the wayside pool 

Is creeping slowly o'er us. 
The cricket to the frog's bassoon 
515 His shrillest time is keeping ; 
The sickle of yon setting moon 
The meadow-mist is reaping. 

The night is falling, comrades mine. 
Our footsore beasts are weary, 
520 And through yon elms the tavern sign 
Looks out upon us cheery. 
To-morrow, eastward with our charge 

We '11 go to meet the dawning, 
Ere yet the pines of Kearsarge 
525 Have seen the sun of morning. 

497. See Genesis xli. 2-4. 



68 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 

When snow-flakes o'er the frozen earth, 

Instead of birds, are flitting ; 
When children throng the glowing hearth, 

And quiet wives are knitting ; 
530 While in the firelight strong and clear 

Young eyes of pleasure glisten. 
To tales of all we see and hear 

The ears of home shall listen. 

By many a Northern lake and hill, 
635 From many a mountain pasture. 
Shall fancy play the Drover still. 

And speed the long night faster. 
Then let us on, through shower and sun. 
And heat and cold, be driving ; 
640 There 's life alone in duty done, 
And rest alone in striving. 



THE HUSKERS. 

It was late in mild October, and the long autumnal 
rain 

Had left the summer harvest-fields all green with 
grass again ; 

The first sharp frost had fallen, leaving all the 
woodlands gay 
545 With the hues of summer's rainbow, or the meadow- 
flowers of May. 

Through a thin, dry mist, that morning, the sun rose 

broad and red, 
At first a rayless disk of fire, he brightened as he 

sped ; 



SONGS OF LABOR. 69 

Yet, even his noontide glory fell chastened and 
subdued, 

On the cornfields and the orchards, and softly pic- 
tured wood. 

550 And all that quiet afternoon, slow sloping to the 

night. 
He wove with golden shuttle the haze with yellow 

light; 
Slanting through the painted beeches, he glorified 

the hill ; 
And, beneath it, pond and meadow lay brighter, 

greener still. 

And shouting boys in woodland haunts caught 

glimpses of that sky, 
555 Flecked by the many-tinted leaves, and laughed, 

they knew not why, 
And school-girls gay with aster-flowers, beside the 

meadow brooks. 
Mingled the glow of autumn with the sunshine of 

sweet looks. 

From spire and barn looked westerly the patient 
weathercocks ; 

But even the birches on the hill stood motionless 
as rocks. 
560 No sound was in the woodlands, save the squirrel's 
dropping shell. 

And the yellow leaves among the boughs, low rus- 
tling as they fell. 

The summer grains were harvested; the stubble- 
fields lay dry. 



70 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 

Where June winds rolled, in light and shade, the 

pale green waves of rye ; 
But still, on gentle hill-slopes, in valleys fringed 

with wood, 
665 Ungathered, bleaching in the sun, the heavy corn 

crop stood. 

Bent low, by autumn's wind and rain, through husks 
that, dry and sere. 

Unfolded from their ripened charge, shone out the 
yellow ear ; 

Beneath, the turnip lay concealed, in many a ver- 
dant fold. 

And glistened in the slanting light the pumpkin's 
sphere of gold. 

570 There wrought the busy harvesters ; and many a 
creaking wain 

Bore slowly to the long barn-floor its load of husk 
and grain ; 

Till broad and red, as when he rose, the sun sank 
down, at last. 

And like a merry guest's farewell, the day in bright- 
ness passed. 

And lo ! as through the western pines, on meadow, 
stream, and pond, 
575 Flamed the red radiance of a sky, set all afire be- 
yond. 

Slowly o'er the eastern sea-bluffs a milder glory 
shone, 

And the sunset and the moonrise were mingled into 
one! 



SONGS OF LABOR. 71 

As thus into the quiet night the twilight lapsed 

away, 
And deeper in the brightening moon the tranquil 

shadows lay ; 
580 From many a brown old farm-house, and hamlet 

without name, 
Their milking and their home-tasks done, the merry 

buskers came. 

Swung o'er the heaped-up harvest, from pitchforks 

in the mow. 
Shone dimly down the lanterns on the pleasant 

scene below ; 
The growing pile of husks behind, the golden ears 

before, 
585 And laughing eyes and busy hands and brown 

cheeks glimmering o'er. 

Half hidden, in a quiet nook, serene of look and 

heart. 
Talking their old times over, the old men sat apart ; 
While up and down the unhusked pile, or nestling 

in its shade. 
At hide-and-seek, with laugh and shout, the happy 

children played. 

§90 Urged by the good host's daughter, a maiden young 

and fair, 
Lifting to light her sweet blue eyes and pride of 

soft brown hair. 
The master of the village school, sleek of hair and 

smooth of tongue, 
To the quaint tune of some old psalm, a husking- 

ballad sung. 



72 JOHN GREENLEAF WHIT TIER. 

THE CORN-SONG. 

Heap higli the farmer's wintry hoard ! 
595 Heap high the golden corn ! 
No richer gift has Autumn poured 
From out her lavish horn ! 

Let other lands, exulting, glean 
The apple from the pine, 
600 The orange from its glossy green, 
The cluster from \hQ vine ; 

We better love the hardy gift 

Our rugged vales bestow. 
To cheer us when the storm shall drift 
605 Our harvest-fields with snow. 

Through vales of grass and meads of flowers 
Our ploughs their furrows made. 

While on the hills the sun and showers 
Of changeful April played. 

610 We dropped the seed o'er hill and plain 
Beneath the sun of May, 
And frightened from our sprouting grain 
The robber crows away. 

All through the long, bright days of June 
615 Its leaves grew green and fair. 
And waved in hot midsummer's noon 
Its soft and yellow hair. 

And now, with Autumn's moonlit eves, 
Its harvest-time has come, 



SONGS OF LABOR. 7S 

620 We pluck away the frosted leaves, 
And bear the treasure home. 

There, when the snows about us drift. 

And winter winds are cold, 
Fair hands the broken grain shall sift, 
626 And knead its meal of gold. 

Let vapid idlers loll in silk 

Around their costly board ; 
Give us the bowl of samp and milk. 

By homespun beauty poured ! 

630 Where'er the wide old kitchen hearth 
Sends up its smoky curls. 
Who will not thank the kindly earth, 
And bless our farmer girls ! 

Then shame on all the proud and vain,, 
635 Whose folly laughs to scorn 
The blessing of our hardy grain, 
Our wealth of golden corn ! 

Let earth withhold her goodly root. 
Let mildew blight the rye, 
640 Give to the worm the orchard's fruit. 
The wheat-field to the fly : 

But let the good old crop adorn 

The hills our fathers trod ; 
Still let us, for His golden corn, 
645 Send up our thanks to God ! 



IV. 

SELECTED POEMS. 

THE BAREFOOT BOY. 

Blessings on thee, little man, 
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan ! 
With thy turned-up pantaloons, 
And thy merry whistled tunes ; 

5 With thy red lip, redder still 
Kissed by strawberries on the hill ; 
With the sunshine on thy face, 
Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace ; 
From my heart I give thee joy, — 

10 I was once a barefoot boy ! 

Prince thou art, — the grown-up man 
Only is republican. 
Let the million-dollared ride ! 
Barefoot, trudging at his side, 

15 Thou hast more than he can buy 
In the reach of ear and eye, — 
Outward sunshine, inward joy : 
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy ! 

Oh for boyhood's painless play, 
20 Sleep that wakes in laughing day, 
Health that mocks the doctor's rules, 
Knowledge never learned of schools, 



SELECTED POEMS, 75 

Of the wild bee's morning chase, 

Of the wild-flower's time and place, 
25 Flight of fowl and habitude 

Of the tenants of the wood ; 

How the tortoise bears his shell, 

How the woodchuck digs his cell, 

And the ground-mole sinks his well ; 
30 How the robin feeds her young. 

How the oriole's nest is hung ; 

Where the whitest lilies blow. 

Where the freshest berries grow. 

Where the ground-nut trails its vine, 
35 Where the wood-grape's clusters shine ; 

Of the black wasp's cunning way, 

Mason of his walls of clay, 

And the architectural plans 

Of gray hornet artisans ! 
40 For, eschewing books and tasks, 

Nature answers all he asks ; 

Hand in hand with her he walks, 

Face to face with her he talks. 

Part and parcel of her joy, — - 
4.5 Blessings on the barefoot boy ! 

Oh for boyhood's time of June, 
Crowding years in one brief moon, 
When all things I heard or saw, 
Me, their master, waited for. 

50 I was rich in flowers and trees. 
Humming-birds and honey-bees ; 
For my sport the squirrel played. 
Plied the snouted mole his spade ; 
For my taste the blackberry cone 

55 Purpled over hedge and stone ; 



76 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIEE, 

Laughed the brook for my delight 
Through the day and through the night, 
Whispering at the garden wall, 
Talked with me from fall to fall ; 

60 Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond, 
Mine the walnut slopes beyond, 
Mine, on bending orchard trees, 
Apples of Hesperides ! 
Still as my horizon grew, 

65 Larger grew my riches too ; 
All the world I saw or knew 
Seemed a complex Chinese toy. 
Fashioned for a barefoot boy ! 

Oh for festal dainties spread, 
70 Like my bowl of milk and bread ; 

Pewter spoon and bowl of wood. 

On the door-stone, gray and rude ! 

O'er me, like a regal tent. 

Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent, 
75 Purple-curtained, fringed with gold, 

Looped in many a wind-swung fold, 

While for music came the play 

Of the pied frogs' orchestra ; 

And, to light the noisy choir, 
80 Lit the fly his lamp of fire. 

I was monarch : pomp and joy 

Waited on the barefoot boy ! 

Cheerily, then, my little man. 
Live and laugh, as boyhood can ! 

63. The Hesperides were three nymphs who were set to guard] 
the golden apples which Gsea (Earth) planted in the gardens of] 
.Here, as a wedding gift. 



SELECTED POEMS. 11 

35 Though the flinty slopes be hard, 

Stubble-speared the new-mown sward, 

Every morn shall lead thee through 

Fresh baptisms of the dew ; 

Every evening from thy feet 
90 Shall the cool wind kiss the heat : 

All too soon these feet must hide 

In the prison cells of pride, 

Lose the freedom of the sod. 

Like a colt's for work be shod, 
95 Made to tread the mills of toil. 

Up and down in ceaseless moil : 

Happy if their track be found 

Never on forbidden ground ; 

Happy if they sink not in 
100 Quick and treacherous sands of sin. 

Ah ! that thou couldst know thy joy, 

Ere it passes, barefoot boy ! 



HOW THE ROBIN CAME. 
AN ALGONQUIN LEGEND. 

Happy young friends, sit by me, 
Under May's blown apple-tree, 
While these home-birds in and out 
Through the blossoms flit about. 

5 Hear a story, strange and old, 
By the wild red Indians told. 
How the robin came to be : 
Once a great chief left his son, — 
Well-beloved, his only one, — 

10 When the boy was well-nigh grown. 
In the trial-lodge alone. 



78 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 

Left for tortures long and slow 
Youths like him must undergo, 
Who their pride of manhood test, 
15 Lacking water, food, and rest. 

Seven days the fast he kept. 

Seven nights he never slept. 

Then the young boy, wrung with pain, 

Weak from nature's overstrain, 

20 Faltering, moaned a low complaint : 
" Spare, me, father, for I faint ! " 
But the chieftain, haughty-eyed, 
Hid his pity in his pride. 
" You shall be a hunter good, 

25 Knowing never lack of food : 
You shall be a warrior great. 
Wise as fox and strong as bear ; 
Many scalps your belt shall wear, 
If with patient heart you wait 

30 Bravely till your task is done. 
Better you should starving die 
Than that boy and squaw should cry 
Shame upon your father's son ! " 

When next morn the sun's first rays 
35 Glistened on the hemlock sprays. 

Straight that lodge the old chief sought, 

And boiled samp and moose meat brought. 

"Rise and eat, my son ! " he said. 

Lo, he found the poor boy dead ! 
40 As with grief his grave they made. 

And his bow beside him laid. 

Pipe, and knife, and wampum-braid, 

On the lodge-top overhead. 



SELECTED POEMS, 79 

Preening smooth its breast of red 
45 And the bro^vn coat that it wore, 

Sat a bird, unknown before. 

And as if with human tongue, 

"Mourn me not," it said, or sung: 

" I, a bird, am still your son, 
50 Happier than if hunter fleet. 

Or a brave, before your feet 

Laying scalps in battle won. 

Friend of man, my song shall cheer 

Lodge and corn-land ; hovering near, 
55 To each wigwam I shall bring 

Tidings of the coming spring ; 

Every child my voice shall know 

In the moon of melting snow. 

When the maple's red bud swells, 
60 And the wind-flower lifts its bells. 

As their fond companion 

Men shall henceforth own your son, 

And my song shall testify 

That of human kin am I." 

65 Thus the Lidian legend saith 

How, at first, the robin came 

With a sweeter life and death. 

Bird for boy, and still the same. 

If my young friends doubt that this 
70 Is the robin's genesis. 

Not in vain is still the myth 

If a truth be found therewith : 

Unto gentleness belong 

Gifts unknown to pride and wrong ; 
75 Happier far than hate is praise, — 

He who sings than he who slays. 



80 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 



TELLING THE BEES. 

A remarkable custom, brought from the Old Coimtry, formerly pre- 
vailed in the rural districts of New England. On the death of a 
member of the family, the bees were at once informed of the event, 
and their hives were dressed in mourning. This ceremonial was sup- 
posed to be necessary to prevent the swarms from leaving their hives 
and seeking a new home. The scene is minutely that of the Whittier 
homestead. 

Here is the place ; right over the hill 

Runs the path I took ; 
You can see the gap in the old wall still, 

And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook. 

5 There is the house, with the gate red-barred, 
And the poplars tall ; 
And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-yard, 
And the white horns tossing above the wall. 

There are the beehives ranged in the sun ; 
10 And down by the brink 
Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed o'errun. 
Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink. 

A jT^ear has gone, as the tortoise goes, 
Heavy and slow ; 
15 And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows, 
And the same brook sings of a year ago. 

There 's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze ; 

And the June sun warm 
Tangles his wings of fire in the trees, 
20 Setting, as then, over Fern'side farm. 



SELECTED POEMS. 81 

I mind me how with a lover's care 

From my Sunday coat 
I brushed off the burrs, and smoothed my hair, 

And cooled at the brookside my brow and throat. 

25 Since we parted, a month had passed, — 
To love, a year ; 
Down through the beeches I looked at last 

On the little red gate and the well-sweep near. 

I can see it all now, — the slantwise rain 
30 Of light through the leaves, 
The sundown's blaze on her window-pane, 
The bloom of her roses under the eaves. 

Just the same as a month before, — 
The house and the trees, 
35 The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door, — 
Nothing changed but the hive of bees. 

Before them, under the garden wall, 

Forward and back. 
Went drearily singing the chore-girl small, 
40 Draping each hive with a shred of black. 

• Trembling, I listened : the summer sun 
Had the chill of snow ; 
For I knew she was telling the bees of one 
Gone on the journey we all must go ! 

45 Then I said to myself, '' My Mary weeps 
For the dead to-day : 
Haply her blind grandsire sleeps 

The fret and the pain of his age away." 



82 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 

But her dog whined low ; on the doorway sill, 
50 With his cane to his chin, 
The old man sat ; and the chore-girl still 
Sung to the bees stealing out and in. 

And the song she was singing ever since 
In my ear sounds on : — 
55 " Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence ! 
Mistress Mary is dead and gone ! " 



SWEET FERN. 

The subtle power in perfume found 
Nor priest nor sibyl vainly learned ; 

On Grecian shrine or Aztec mound 
No censer idly burned. 

5 That power the old-time worships knew, 
The Corybantes' frenzied dance, 
The Pythian priestess swooning through 
The wonderland of trance. 

And Nature holds, in wood and field, 
10 Her thousand sunlit censers still ; 
To spells of flower and shrub we yield 
Against or with our will. 

I climbed a hill path strange and new 
With slow feet, pausing at each turn ; 

6. The Corybantes were priests of Rhea, or Cybele, the great 
mother of the gods, worshipped in Phrygia. In their solemn 
festivals they displayed extravagant fury in dancing. 

7. The priestess of the Delphic oracle uttered her prophecies 
while in an ecstasy. 



SELECTED POEMS. 83 

15 A sudden waft of west wind blew 
The breath of the sweet fern. 

That fragrance from my vision swept 

The alien landscape ; in its stead, 
Up fairer hills of youth I stepped, 

As lisfht of heart as tread. 



20 



I saw my boyhood's lakelet shine 

Once more through rifts of woodland shade ; 
I knew my river's winding line 

By morning mist betrayed. 

25 With me June's freshness, lapsing brook, 
Murmurs of leaf and bee, the call 
Of birds, and one in voice and look 
In keeping with them all. 

A fern beside the way we went 
so She plucked, and, smiling, held it up, 
While from her hand the wild, sweet scent 
I drank as from a cup. 

O potent witchery of smell ! 

The dust-dry leaves to life return, 
35 And she who plucked them owns the spell 
And lifts her ghostly fern. 

Or sense or spirit ? Who shall say 

What touch the chord of memory thrills ? 
It passed, and left the August day 
40 Ablaze on lonely hills. 



84 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 



THE POOR VOTER ON ELECTION DAY. 

The proudest now is but my peer, 

The highest not more high ; 
To-day, of all the weary year, 

A king of men am I. 
5 To-day alike are great and small, 

The nameless and the known ; 
My palace is the people's hall, 

The ballot-box my throne ! 

Who serves to-day upon the list 
10 Beside the served shall strand ; 
Alike the brown and wrinkled fist, 

The gloved and dainty hand ! 
The rich is level with the poor, 
The weak is strong to-day ; 
15 And sleekest broadcloth counts no more 
Than homespun frock of gray. 

To-day let pomp and vain pretence 

My stubborn right abide ; 
I set a plain man's common sense 
20 Against the pedant's pride. 
To-day shall simple manhood try 

The strength of gold and land ; 
The wide world has not wealth to buy 

The power in my right hand ! 

25 While there 's a grief to seek redress, 
Or balance to adjust. 
Where weighs our living manhood less 
Than Mammon's vilest dust, — 



SELECTED POEMS. 85 

While there 's a right to need my vote, 
}o A wrong to sweep away, 

Up ! clouted knee and ragged coat ! 
A man 's a man to-day ! 

THE HILL-TOP. 

The burly driver at my side, 

We slowly climbed the hill, 
Whose summit, in the hot noontide, 

Seemed rising, rising still. 
5 At last, our short noon-shadows hid 

The top-stone, bare and brown, 
From whence, like Gizeh's pyramid, 

The rough mass slanted down. 

I felt the cool breath of the North ; 

Between me and the sun. 
O'er deep, still lake, and ridgy earth, 

-I-saw the cloud-shades run. 
Before me, stretched for glistening miles, 
Lay mountain-girdled Squam ; 
15 Like green-winged birds, the leafy isles 
Upon its bosom swam. 

And, glimmering through the sun-haze warm, 

Far as the eye could roam. 
Dark billows of an earthquake storm 
20 Beflecked with clouds like foam, 
Their vales in misty shadow deep. 

Their rugged peaks In shine, 

7. Gizeh's pyramid is one of the great pyramids on the banks 
of the Nile, near Cairo. 

14. Squam or Asquam lake, at the base of the White Hills , 



10 



86 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 

I saw the mountain ranges sweep 
The horizon's northern line. 

25 There towered Chocorua's peak ; and west 
Moosehillock's woods were seen, 
With many a nameless slide-scarred crest 

And pine-dark gorge between. 
Bejond them, like a sun-rimmed cloud, 
30 The great Notch mountains shone, 
Watched over by the solemn-browed 
And awful face of stone ! 

" A good look-off ! " the driver spake ; 
'' About this time last year, 
35 1 drove a party to the Lake, 

And stopped, at evening, here. 
'T was duskish down below ; but all 

These hills stood in the sun. 
Till, dipped behind yon purple wall, 
40 He left them, one by one. 

" A lady, who, from Thornton hill, 

Had held her place outside. 
And, as a pleasant woman will. 

Had cheered the long, dull ride, 
45 Besought me, with so sweet a smile. 

That — though I hate delays — 
I could not choose but rest awhile, — 

(These women have such ways !) 

" On yonder mossy ledge she sat, 
50 Her sketch upon her knees, 

26. The nearer Indian form is MoosiFauke. 

32. See Hawthorne's story of The Great Stone Face, 



I 



SELECTED POEMS. 87 

A stray brown lock beneath her hat 

Unrolling in the breeze ; 
Her sweet face, in the sunset light 

Upraised and glorified, — 
56 1 never saw a prettier sight 

In all my mountain ride. 



" As good as fair ; it seemed her joy 

To comfort and to give ; 
My poor, sick wife, and cripple boy, 

Will bless her while they live! " 
The tremor in the driver's tone 

His manhood did not shame : 
" I dare say, sir, you may have known " — 

He named a well-known name. 



60 



65 Then sank the pyramidal mounds. 
The blue lake fled away ; 
For mountain-scope a parlor's bounds, 

A lighted hearth for day ! 
From lonely years and weary miles 
70 The shadows fell apart ; 

Kind voices cheered, sweet human smiles 
Shone warm into my heart. 

We journeyed on ; but earth and sky 
Had power to charm no more ; 
75 Still dreamed my inward-turning eye 
The dream of memory o'er. 
Ah ! human kindness, human love, — 

To few who seek denied ; 
Too late we learn to prize above 
80 The whole round world beside ! 

65. The measure requires the pronunciation pyramid'al, though 
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